Rita Springer – Defender

Rita Springer has been in the Christian music business since 1995, with her first and independent album, Love Covers.  Since then, she has released ten other studio albums, including All I Have (2000), Created to Worship (2001), Effortless (2002), Rise Up: Live Worship (2004), I Have to Believe (2005), Worth It All (2007), Beautiful You (2008), In This Forever (2011), The Playlist (2012), and Battles (2017).  She is part of the Vineyard movement, along with Andy Park, whom I have written on previously.  To my knowledge, she has not won any awards for her work.

This review will be Defender from her album Battles.

Lyrics can be found at https://genius.com/Rita-springer-defender-lyrics.

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1. What message does the song communicate?

I have a good understanding of what Springer was going for.  She attempted to communicate that God wins our battles for us, mends our brokenness, and saves us, restoring our faith.  My understanding is that Springer’s inspiration for this song came from Psalm 68:21, which talks about God bringing back the head of my enemy.  Yet, how do we know that it is about God?  Perhaps we can rationalize that all the references to praise and worship, salvation, faith, and the word “Lord” at the end of the song would suffice; However, this could be much clearer.

There is a lack of clarity on “saved me”.  Saved me from what?  To what?  If we are going to worship God about His saving us, the least we can do is explain why.

Finally, Springer’s unfortunate pairing of “you have saved me” with “So much better Your way” has the unfortunate linguistic consenquence of communicating that there could be other ways to salvation and God’s way is better.  Perhaps the line “So much higher your ways” would make for a better substitute.

Score: 5/10

2. How much of the lyrics line up with Scripture?

While some lines agree with Scripture, others are problematic, some more serious than others.

We will assume “You” refers to God for maximum scoring potential.  Since the word “Lord” is mentioned in the last line, I won’t apply a penalty for this assumption.

[Verse 1]

Lines 1-4: The final enemy is death (1 Corinthians 15:26-28).  Springer’s war against death was won through Christ, granting her victory (1 Corinthians 15:54-57).

Lines 5 and 6: Repeats lines 1 and 2.

Lines 7 and 8: This is worded poorly, though perhaps an excessive nitpick on my part.  God is love (1 John 4:8) and God is Springer’s defense (Ruth 2:12, 2 Samuel 22:3-4, Psalm 3:3, Psalm 5:11, Psalm 18:30, Psalm 27:1, Psalm 32:7, Psalm 34:22, Psalm 41:2, Psalm 46:1, Psalm 57:1, Psalm 59:1, Psalm 61:3, Psalm 91:1-16, Psalm 118:8, Psalm 121:7-8, Psalm 138:7, Proverbs 18:10, Proverbs 30:5, Nahum 1:7, 2 Thessalonians 3:3, and 1 John 5:18).  We could say that God’s love compels Him to defense.  But, love itself cannot do anything on its own.

[Pre-Chorus]

Lines 1-4: Perhaps referencing from Exodus 14:14, where God commanded the Israelite people to keep silent while God fights their enemies, the Egyptians.  However, that is a specific context.  We cannot reasonably expect God to always rescue us from our enemies if we merely praise and worship God.  According to Matthew 10:22, we will be a hated people on account of Jesus.  We should expect persecution from outsiders (Matthew 10:16-25).

[Chorus]

Line 1: Saved me from what? To what?  The Bridge somewhat answers this when Springer sings about lostness, but it’s not as clear as, say,  John 3:16-21.  Missing from Springer’s message is that we are saved from eternal damnation into eternal life with God.

Line 2: Better and also higher than my ways (see Isaiah 55:8-9).

Line 3: Correct, God is Springer’s defense (see Ruth 2:12, 2 Samuel 22:3-4, Psalm 3:3, Psalm 5:11, Psalm 18:30, Psalm 27:1, Psalm 32:7, Psalm 34:22, Psalm 41:2, Psalm 46:1, Psalm 57:1, Psalm 59:1, Psalm 61:3, Psalm 91:1-16, Psalm 118:8, Psalm 121:7-8, Psalm 138:7, Proverbs 18:10, Proverbs 30:5, Nahum 1:7, 2 Thessalonians 3:3, and 1 John 5:18).

Line 4: Repeats line 2.

[Verse 2]

Lines 1 and 2: The place to seek is Jesus (John 14:6).

Line 3: More protection language.  See Chorus, line 3.

Line 4: Restored faith to whom?  To what?  This is not mentioned anywhere in the song.

[Bridge]

Lines 1-5: God is in the business of mending broken hearts (see Psalm 147:3, Isaiah 54:1-17, Matthew 11:28-30, and 2 Corinthians 12:9)

Line 6: See Chorus, line 3.

Score: 7/10

3. How would an outsider interpret the song?

I am not sure, to be honest.  There is not a whole lot here that will lead unbelievers to conclude this as a Christian song.  Perhaps it was sung in church, they might make the connection.  But outside of church?  Sure, there are church-y words like hallelujah, saved, praise, worship, bow down, and Lord.  These might lead one to believe that the song is about some sort of healing savior, so that brings them somewhat towards Christianity.  But, it could be a lot clearer.

Score: 5/10

4. What does this song glorify?

Springer intends to glorify God and I can give her some credit for that, but her execution, as mentioned previously, has a lot of work.  I’ll give half credit.

Score 5/10

Closing Comments

Rita Springer’s Defender is a mixed bag.  Though it does contain some biblically accurate lines and a good overall message, its execution is unclear and contains problem passages.  Yes, there are some who will listen to these lyrics and find spiritual blessing upon hearing, and I am grateful for that.  To God be the glory that He uses it to bless others.  However, we can find better songs to accomplish the same goal.

Final Score: 6/10

Artist Info

Track: Defender (listen to the song)

Artist: Rita Springer

Album: Battles

Genre: Contemporary Christian Music (CCM)

Release Year: 2016

Duration: 7:17

Agree?  Disagree?  Don’t be shy or have a cow!  Calmly and politely state your case in a comment, below.

Updates:

07/16/2020: Kenly informed me that I did not address the victory in the opening of Verse 1.  I added further commentary.  This did not alter my score. I also changed the “we/our” pronouns to Springer, since her lyrics contain “I/me”.

10/11/2019: After a brief conversation with commenter Briana Santillana, she made a compelling case for the possibility of multiple ways to salvation within the Chorus.  I summarized it in section 1 and took away a point; However, due to rounding, the overall score remains the same.

07/28/2019: Commenter Ken Ferguson caused me to revaluate this review with his commentary.  I updated the first section and bumped up its score, raising its total rating from 5.5/10 to 6/10.