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."

Depression: Just The Regular Type

I was listening to an interesting story on NPR this morning about the rising popularity of "non-religious" songs being chosen for funerals. This got me thinking about how badly I wanted Kelly Clarkson's entire debut album to be my life's soundtrack. No but seriously, I actually do want my life to be a celebration of Billy Joel's musical career, like a real life version of "Moving Out". Oh Billy...

Anyway, according to a study done recently, THE most popular non-religious song chosen to be played at a funeral is Sinatra's "My Way". Here are the lyrics:







My Way
And now, the end is near;
And so I face the final curtain.
My friend, Ill say it clear,
Ill state my case, of which Im certain.

Ive lived a life thats full.
Ive traveled each and every highway;
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Regrets, Ive had a few;
But then again, too few to mention.
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption.

I planned each charted course;
Each careful step along the byway,
But more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Yes, there were times, Im sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew.
But through it all, when there was doubt,
I ate it up and spit it out.
I faced it all and I stood tall;
And did it my way.

Ive loved, Ive laughed and cried.
Ive had my fill; my share of losing.
And now, as tears subside,
I find it all so amusing.

To think I did all that;
And may I say - not in a shy way,
No, oh no not me,
I did it my way.

For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels;
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows -
And did it my way!

To me this is kind of depressing. I can see how the whole "I do what's best for me" thing can seem like freedom for a while, but unfortunately it turns out to be a delusion. In fact, the only thing that actually brings freedom is the exact opposite - Love. We are amazing creatures with the ability to literally orient our entire lives around the very things that make us most miserable, and then at the end of it all sing glorious songs of praise about the water in which we're drowning. This brings to mind a line from C. S. Lewis' novel, The Great Divorce:

"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'"

I spend my whole life saying, "I'm doing it my way." Lord, by your grace, I at least hope my dying words are something like, "Okay, do it Your way."

Christian Depression

This is my favorite song by the band Switchfoot. To me, it expresses depression in the best possible way - acknowledging the deep dark issues with self and the world, and then instead of dressing them up or "learning from them" or even running away from them, it embraces the despair for just long enough to see that the true hope of all the world is found by falling to the bottom, not climbing to the top. It is the kind of depression that finds itself at the cross and discovers why we call Good Friday good. Because "nothing is okay until the world caves in".



The Blues
Is this the New Year or just another night?
Is this the new fear or just another fright?
Is this the new tear or just another desperation?

Is this the finger or just another fist?
Is this the kingdom or just a hit n' miss?
I miss direction, most in all this desperation.

Is this what they call freedom?
Is this what you call pain?
Is this what they call discontented fame?

It'll be a day like this one
When the world caves in
When the world caves in
When the world caves in

I'm singing this one like a broken piece of glass,
From broken hearts and broken noses in the back.
Is this the New Year or just another desperation?

You push until you're shoving
You bend until you break
Do you stand on the broken fields where your fathers lay?

It'll be a day like this one
When the world caves in
When the world caves in
When the world caves in

Is nothing here worth saving?
Is no one here at all?
Is there any net left that could break our fall?

It'll be a day like this one
When the sky falls down and the hungry and poor and deserted are found.
Are you discontented? Have you been pushing hard?
Have you been throwing down this broken house of cards?

It'll be a day like this one
When the world caves in
When the world caves in
When the world caves in

Is there nothing left now?
Nothing left to sing?
Are there any left who haven't kissed the enemy?
Is this the New Year or just another desperation?

Does justice never find you? Do the wicked never lose?
Is there any honest song to sing besides these blues?

And nothing is okay
Until the world caves in

Celebrating the Reality of Resurrection

Seven Stanzas at Easter
by John Updike (1960)

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

The Whole World Counting on One Execution

Everyone knows Wikipedia is right about everything, so...here's what it has to say about the tradition of "sacrifice" in the history of humanity:

The practice of sacrifice is found in the oldest human records. The archaeological record contains human and animal corpses with sacrificial marks long before any written records of the practice. Sacrifices are a common theme in most religions...Animal sacrifice has turned up in almost all cultures, from the Hebrews to the Greeks and Romans (particularly the purifying ceremony Lustratio) , Ancient Egyptians (for example in the cult of Apis )and from the Aztecs to the Yoruba. Animal sacrifice is still practiced today..."

What an odd common thread throughout virtually all societies. Why? In most cultures, sacrifices were offered to the gods or to a god for one of two reasons: 1) Fear - fear of what the gods might do if not satisfied; fear of droughts, fear of storms, fear of the sun not coming up, fear of the sky falling down, etc... 2) Shame - the feeling of guilt that gave way to the thought that the gods demanded some form of expiation or "making amends" for wrongdoing.

And into this world of people universally overwhelmed by fear and shame, either driven to obsessive sacrifice or even more obsessive denial, comes a new idea from the mouths of Hebrew prophets. A sacrifice that would end all sacrifices. A sacrifice that would finally drive out fear and do away with shame once for all. A sacrifice that would actually make peace with God.

...He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter... (Isaiah 53)

And then centuries later:

"Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1)

According to Christians, the very man of whom those words were spoken was nailed to a cross some 2000 years ago, and we are assured by his earliest followers that his death was the perfect sacrifice, once for all, the end of fear and the end of shame:

When Christ came into the world, he said: "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, 'Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll— I have come to do your will, O God.' " First he said, "Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them" (although the law required them to be made). Then he said, "Here I am, I have come to do your will." He sets aside the first to establish the second. And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool, because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says: "This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds." Then he adds: "Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more." And where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin. - (Hebrews 10)

What a radical claim we Christians celebrate this week. What a radical message to the world, past and present:

Do not fear. Stop your sacrificing. You have already nailed a man to a cross. But He is God, He is Love, and He died for you. By his wounds you are healed. Simply trust. Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.