Dec. 15: Hallelujah

At church today, some singers sang a version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, changing the lyrics to make it a Christian worship song. It's not the first time I have witnessed this phenomenon and although I don't fault my fellow believers who perform surgery on the late Mr. Cohen's words, I have to confess that I prefer the original.

I understand that Hallelujah is something of a secular hymn; the journalist Larry Sloman says it's "one part biblical, one part the woman that Cohen slept with last night." The song, now 40 years old, has been interpreted by so many singers (my favourite being kd lang) and has taken on a mythic status. Indeed, you could build an argument for it being the most Canadian song of all time.

What I like so much about art - and make no mistake, a song qualifies as art - is that the listener can interpret it for themselves. Sometimes this is bad (the novel Death Wish, was written as an anti-vigilante story but was adapted into a movie that took a pro-vigilante stance) but more often than not, it's just fine. I've said before that I have successfully turned the Rolling Stones song Saint of Me into a hymn and I can kind of sort of do that with Hallelujah.

When I hear that song, I think about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that is promised to all believers. And I think about how we should be happy to just have God, but our sinful nature just won't allow that. The Hallelujah lyricist gives us two Old Testament examples - David, who allowed his lust for Bathsheba to overthrow him, and Samson, whose hair was cut by Delilah and whose strength was taken from him.

In one of his essays, David Mamet said that there is no one in the Old Testament you would want to emulate. Even Moses and Elijah, the two prophets transfigured with Christ, had massive flaws. Moses was a fraidycat murderer and Elijah was prone to bouts of massive self-pity. Basically, a whole lot of badasses fit for a Leonard Cohen poem.

This note will be the closest I will ever come to criticizing someone for changing the words of Hallelujah in church. I'm a horrible sinner who doesn't have any right to call anyone to worship, so I'll just let them do what they have to do and wrestle with it on their own.