Music Mondays: God or Girlfriend?

It was the summer of 2000 and I was spending a month as a counselor at Lancer Basketball camp, staying in the venerable Alpha dorm. I brought my portable boombox along with several other creature comforts to entertain myself during down times.

I can't remember if I'd purchased this CD at a store or through my "Power and Glory" Columbia Records membership (remember those?). But it had been recommended to me and decided to check out this new rock worship group Sonicflood. 

What I heard was worship in a rock style that was right up my alley. 

This band along with their debut album became one of the major forerunners of the modern worship movement, incorporating their own songs along with a number of covers. 

One song that I always liked but always gave me some pause was "I Want to Know You".  The song is fine enough yet it sure seems to venture into the "God or Girlfriend" zone. And upon re-listening to it, it seems like a blatant Hanson rip-off. 

The second verse helps save it, quoting Philippians 3. But it's vague and overly-repeated chorus does it no favors. Lots of songs like this tend to be pronoun-heavy - where everyone is supposed to assume we're talking about God or Jesus. The best ones give a little more clarity. The other issue, if you'll allow me a theological rabbit trail,  "touching" and "seeing" the Lord are probably just other ways to describe wanting to "know" him more, but there are a bunch of examples in Scripture where those would not be desirable things to experience in His presence. Jesus solves many of those kinds of problems of course. The song seems to portray entering God's presence as a frivolous thing - which I don't think it means to (again Phil. 3) but is still a little annoying to my theologically-inclined brain.

Ultimately, this seems like a song of it's time. I'm not sure it has had the staying power of other songs of that era. So my conclusion is that this certainly flirts with this problem even if it isn't the worst of examples.