The sermon theme this morning was on seeing God as a parent rather than as a slave-master; seeing oneself as a child rather than a slave. The core passage was from Hosea 2:16
“In that day,” declares the Lord,
“you will call me ‘my husband’;
you will no longer call me ‘my master.
That takes on extra meaning when the word for master was baal, the name of the local false deity. Pastor Kessler opted to not mention the wayward wife Gomer by name, although I half-whispered "Golll-eee!" to Eileen as he mentioned that Hosea was the reading for the day.
However, one of the praisemeisters on as background music before the service went the other direction inadvertently, modernizing How Great Thou Art as How Great You Are. The problem with that is that the King James-sounding thou is second-person familiar in older English; back in the days, friends and loved ones would get thou while strangers and authority figures would get you.
You're not going to get a Spanish love song addressing the beloved with the formal usted; no, eres tu. Likewise, the hymn-writers of old would address God as Abba Daddy with a thou rather than a more distant you.
To the linguistically-illiterate, shifting thou to you makes it sound more modern; it also makes it more distant, more of the absentee slave-owner that folks often treat God as rather than Abba Daddy.
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