What Soul Asylum, C. S. Lewis, Bono & Billy Joel Have In Common

None of them are going to have Sinatra's "My Way" blaring at their funeral. (Billy might have it playing softly...but probably/hopefully not.)

Though almost every compelling story on paper or in the theater still says otherwise, it seems to me the most popular "gospel" of our day is one of self-preservation and self-justification: "You need to do what's best for you."

Thus, it makes quite a bit of sense that a song like"My Way" would be chosen for so many funerals. The "freedom" we celebrate is independence and self-indulgence - to be in control and "do what I please". But the problem is (and always has been) we never find any freedom in our freedom. In fact this version of "freedom" has been our master. I don't get to do what I want; I have to do what I want. Self-absorption is maybe the only thing I can't escape.

In the New Testament, Paul drives this point home by calling us "slaves to sin". In modern terms we might say, we are "addicts". The point being, living for yourself is not your privilege; it's your disease. This is the terrifying diagnosis the Bible gives the world when it uses that word "sin". Sin refers not simply to what we have done (as if by accident), but rather to what we love, who we are, and what we live for, as if it will produce life for us. But unfortunately, "the wages of sin is death."

Yet we live constantly in a state of denial about all this, and so are desperately dependent on those at the very bottom to remind us that we are on a one-way track in the exact opposite direction of where we think. And who could have put it better than the long-forgotten mid-90's radio rock band, Soul Asylum?

It seems no one can help me now
I'm in too deep
There's no way out
This time I have really led myself astray

Runaway train never going back
Wrong way on a one way track
Seems like I should be getting somewhere
Somehow I'm neither here no there

Bought a ticket for a runaway train
Like a madman laughin' at the rain
Little out of touch, little insane
Just easier than dealing with the pain

Most people choose denial, because "wrong way on a one-way track" is a truly terrifying diagnosis to come to grips with. Perhaps the only thing more terrifying is the prospect of going in the other direction. This is the uncharted territory of Love, where your heart is sure to be broken to pieces! Jesus did not prescribe "turn the other cheek" as an effective means of getting what you want through passive resistance. He said it, knowing that He would be the only one who could absolutely pull it off - the only one who was 100% victim and 0% offender. He said it knowing that to love your enemies was to be slain by them. But in so doing, we who were enemies became heirs through his death - through his Love. Love is death and resurrection.

And Love is the lifeblood of those who believe. It is the fruit we bear when we realize how much we have been forgiven and delivered from the narcissistic runaway train to hell that was our former life. We love because He first loved us. But Love on this earth is gritty reality. It's not dream land, it's not an escape, and it's not a drug. It hurts. It risks. It trusts. It bears with. It breaks your heart as it promises to make all things new. It's the left-handed power that conquers the world by being conquered. Love is greater than faith and hope, because it is where faith and hope find their truest manifestation.

C. S. Lewis speaks BRILLIANTLY about this:

“Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to keep it intact, you must...lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."

Obviously, that speaks for itself. Here's Billy Joel's way of putting it, from a song (clearly in his later years) called "And So It Goes":

I spoke to you in cautious tones
You answered me with no pretense
And still I feel I said too much
My silence is my self defense

But if my silence made you leave
Then that would be my worst mistake
So I will share this room with you
And you can have this heart to break

And this is why my eyes are closed
It's just as well for all I've seen
And so it goes, and so it goes
And you're the only one who knows

So I would choose to be with you
That's if the choice were mine to make
But you can make decisions too
And you can have this heart to break

And Bono, seemingly answering the the question posed on the album cover, prays this at the end of U2's song "Yahweh":

What no man can own
No man can take
Take this heart
Take this heart
Take this heart and make it break

May our hearts be dismantled by Love so that Love can rebuild them from the ground up. So that we can be His and not our own. So that we'll continue saying, "Take this heart. Take this heart. Take this heart."