***Last week on the blog I asked for your requests and ideas for POP GOD. This week we have our first reader-requested post from my friend Ogden, who asked for a post on Hanson’s classic song “MMMBop”. If you have a current or classic pop culture item you’d like to see discussed on POP GOD, leave a comment and I will make your request happen:

Has there ever been a song quite like “MMMBop”?

In 1997 the Hanson brothers exploded onto the pop scene with arguably the most infectious and nonsensical song of the 90s.

Everybody knew “MMMBop”. A lot of people still know “MMMBop”. Just play the video if you can’t quite remember the song and it should come rushing right back to your brain.

(Click Here if you can’t see the video above.)

You can sing the chorus right now. It’s just a bunch of nonsense bebops and dubadops.

But do you know the rest of the lyrics? Can you sing the other verses of “MMMBop”?

I’m sure some of you can. Some of you probably still check Hanson tour dates to see what town they’re playing in tonight. Some of you are getting ready to let me know they’re actually a talented band and I should really check out their recent music.

Yes, there are hardcore Hanson fans. But they are the minority. The majority of people will tell you they know Hanson, and they know the song “MMMBop”, but they really just know the song in passing.

“MMMBop” is the type of song where you feel like you know it when you really don’t. It’s the type of song you just kind of make up your own words to without bothering to learn the actual ones.

“MMMBop” is a pleasant enough song but it’s really just earcandy, isn’t it? You’d rather not dig too deep into it. That would require effort.

Now, I’m not saying you’re a bad person if you don’t know all the words to “MMMBop”. I just think this is a pretty common trend today – the lack of effort to really understand what’s going on around us.

Which is a little bit like how our generation views Christianity. It’s a pleasant enough thing to think about every so often. It’s a fad you get swept up into when you’re younger. You might identify yourself as a fan of it but you’d rather not dig too deep into it.

There are people who say they know The Bible. The people who can tell you one verse in particular, but don’t really know the rest of the words. The people who don’t really know what the song is all about.

If you look at the lyrics of “MMMBop”, you learn that an MMMBop is a period of time. A split second moment, a whirlwind passage.

“In an MMMBop they’re gone”. In an MMMBop this life will be over. In an MMMBop it will be too late to do what you’ve been waiting to do.

Maybe you’ve been waiting until you’ve had a little more time on your hands. Maybe you’ve been waiting until “tomorrow” to really start studying God’s word. Maybe you’ve been waiting to really start communicating on a deeper level.

Maybe you won’t get tomorrow.

Just like Hanson’s time on top of the charts, your time on this earth is shorter than you can imagine.

Learning the lyrics – being able to communicate the truth instead of making things up as you go along – this is a more fruitful way of living. Of course there are some truths we will never fully understand. Therein lies another mysterious beauty of this faith.

The great thing about Christianity is you don’t have to know all the words to be able to sing along. You don’t have to have everything figured out and memorized to join the chorus. But it helps.

Don’t be content with surface level communication. Make the most of your MMMBop.

Do you ever feel like you’re making up the words in your relationship with God?