“As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. ‘Tell us,’ they said, ‘when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?’”
_Matthew 24:3
“No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”
_Matthew 24:36
It is interesting that in the most comprehensive apocalyptic section of the Gospels, Matthew 24-25, no one ever answers that nagging question… when? The disciples ask Jesus, plainly and simply, and he answers with riddles about being ready capped off with a shrug… “I don’t know…” Why wouldn’t Jesus know something so important? Well, that might be the answer right there. If it was so important wouldn’t Jesus know it? The author of Matthew maintains, throughout his or her gospel, a Jesus who seems to know just about everything including his impending death (see Matthew 16 and 20) and even Peters’ infamous denial of him (Matthew 26). Jesus knows all that you’d think he would know except when he’s coming back. It is as though the author is making a comment about what is really important here. The disciples ask when, Jesus doesn’t know, but that doesn’t stop him from teaching for two whole chapters in direct response to their question.
When Jesus is asked “when?” he responds with how. He teaches the importance of being prepared. He teaches about how to live with eschatological hope. And how should one live? Should we spend all our time trying to figure out when Jesus is coming back? Should we be trying to “crack the code” of the Revelation? What Jesus doesn’t know must not be important.
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’” _Matthew 25:34-36
Jesus teaches that what is really important is not the when but the how–how we should live. What’s really important is living a life in participation and cooperation with the Crucified Messiah, the kind of life that invites the stranger in. This is the kind of eschatological faith that gives importance to books like Revelation and Daniel even for generations other than the “last generation.” Jesus places all the importance of eschatology on life now.
It’s interesting that we spend so much time trying to figure out what Jesus didn’t know, rather than trying to follow how he lived.
Sometimes I feel like I’m just existing
I’m not really living
I’m only watching the time slip away
I’ve forgotten who I am in you
I’m not who I’m meant to be
I’m drifting farther away from my destiny
Awaken my heart, awaken my soul
Awaken your power and take control
Awaken the passion to live for you, lord
Awaken me
My soul is longing, my heart is searching
I’m desperate for you to move
Give me a hunger, pull me closer
I’m crying out to you
Awaken my heart, awaken my soul
Awaken your power and take control
Awaken the passion to live for you, lord
Open my eyes so I can see your presence dwelling inside
Wake me up, cause I can’t live another minute
if I’m not shining your light
Awaken my heart, awaken my soul
Awaken the passion in me
Lord, awaken me to live my destiny
Lord, awaken me and shine your light through me
Lord, awaken me to live my destiny
Lord, awaken me and shine your light through me
Natalie Grant’s song stands on its own in all the songs we’ve looked at thus far because it is not necessarily a song about the Christian response in the midst of trials. Her song is about “not really living” while “time slips away.” This is a song about finding an awakening experience in the midst of the drudgery of life. Grant believes she has a “destiny” that involves awakening her soul, awakening her pour, taking control, and awakening a passion to live for the Lord. She wants her eyes to be opened so she can see the Lord’s “presence dwelling inside.”
There is one word, however, that we must look more deeply into: destiny. What does Grant mean when she throws around words like destiny? I have read reviews of Natalie Grant, and I have found that she seems to be doing a lot of good for the world. Her and her Husband have spent a significant amount of time in India trying to find ways the modern church can help stop sex-trafficking, but what does the word destiny mean in this song? The destiny in this song is apparently something that she can “drift away” from. If you do not follow your destiny, Grant argues that we won’t be who we were meant to be. But who is it that we are meant to be? Grant seems to be arguing that we exist for the purpose of an awakening experience with God. In the tradition of those like Aquinas, she is saying that we can know God through our experience.
Grant’s song is an interesting look at another experiential Christian contemporary worship song.
I’ve been here before, now here I am again
Standing at the door, praying You’ll let me back in
To label me a prodigal would be
Only scratching the surface of who I’ve been known to be
Turn me around pick me up
Undo what I’ve become
Bring me back to the place
Of forgiveness and grace
I need You, need Your help
I can’t do this myself
You’re the only one who can undo
What I’ve become
I focused on the score, but I could never win
Trying to ignore, a life of hiding my sin
To label me a hypocrite would be
Only scratching the surface of who I’ve been known to be
Make every step lead me back to
The sovereign way that You
In the first verse of the song, lead singer Kevin Huguley of the band Rush of Fools begins by referencing the way he feels in his own life to that of the prodigal son. I would like to discuss the interesting midrash that has been done on the story of the prodigal son in light of contemporary American religious beliefs. Huguley references himself as a prodigal “standing at the door.” The reference to “at the door” should raise red flags right away if we are making a comparison between the prodigal and Huguley. In the original story, the father sees him from a distance and is never able to utter any words before the Father begins calling his servants to kill the fatted calf for him. The original prodigal also never prayed that his father would let him back in-the original prodigal realized he had no right to ask to be let back into his father’s house. The original prodigal realized the choices he had made and knew that, in most cases in Israel at this time, one would be lucky if the father even hired you on as a lowly servant. This is the very power of the prodigal’s story. The prodigal’s worth in the eyes of the father is not found in his ability to change, but in the Father’s love to bring him back in spite of the things he has done. It is interesting then that Huguley here asks God to “undo what I’ve become” and “bring me back to the place of forgiveness and grace.”
The song does, however, show the transformative power of God’s grace in our lives. As we come closer and closer to Christ we can more and more “undo” what we’ve become. It shows the power of God as he is willing to take his children and move them to a place where they are changed. But notice also what the song is missing. There is an “undoing” and a willingness to throw off the old, but just as in much of modern Christianity, there is no call to take anything up. There is no powerful call to obedience.
We are very good at calling out brokenness in the evangelical church, but we are not as good as living holy lives. We are not as good at obeying the commands of Jesus Christ. We are not very good at recognizing hypocrites. We are very good at realizing the problems in the church, but we are not very good at fixing them. We are very good at hiding sin, but we are not very good and confessing it and moving away from it. We are not always very faithful in the small things.
I was sure by now
God You would have reached down
And wiped our tears away
Stepped in and saved the day
But once again, I say “Amen”, and it’s still raining
As the thunder rolls
I barely hear Your whisper through the rain
“I’m with you”
And as Your mercy falls
I raise my hands and praise the God who gives
And takes away
And I’ll praise You in this storm
And I will lift my hands
For You are who You are
No matter where I am
And every tear I’ve cried
You hold in Your hand
You never left my side
And though my heart is torn
I will praise You in this storm
I remember when
I stumbled in the wind
You heard my cry to you
And you raised me up again
My strength is almost gone
How can I carry on
If I can’t find You
But as the thunder rolls
I barely hear You whisper through the rain
“I’m with you”
And as Your mercy falls
I raise my hands and praise the God who gives
And takes away
I lift my eyes unto the hills
Where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord
The Maker of Heaven and Earth
The song Praise you in the Storm by Casting Crowns is similar to other songs we have already analyzed like Mountain of Godand Hold Fastin the sense that Praise You in the Storm is also about pain in the midst of trials, but the song is also unique in its own right. When Miller writes Hold Fast he sees in it an eschatological hope that God will rescue us, and Powell reminds us that a mountain will come after the valleys in life. Rather than dipping into eschatology, Mark Hall writes Praise you in the Storm he “I was sure by now God would have reached and wiped our tears away.” Hall taps into a rich tradition of theologians who realize the way the world is and the way God is do not seem to mix.
Hall is tapping in most deeply, as do others in songs like Blessed Be Your Name, the idea that, like Job, we are going to suffer in this life and God seems to still be in control. A good God is letting bad things happen in a world that he originally created good. How can this happen? The question is ultimately a question of theodicy. Theodicy is the study of how God and evil should interact. Kennith Surin defines theodicy as the attempt “reconcile the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect God with the existence of evil.”[1] Surin also notes that “despite the efforts of these and other theologians, the though persists in many quarters that theodicy is perhaps one of the least satisfactory areas of the theological enterprise. Confronted with the seemingly innumerable ‘solutions’ to the problem of evil that have been advanced over the centuries, one cannot help thinking that Kant’s complaint about metaphysics is probably just as applicable to theodicy: ‘[it] has rather to be regarded as a battle-ground quite peculiarly suited for those who desire to exercise themselves in mock combats, and in which no participant has ever yet succeeded in gaining so much as an inch of territory, not at least in such manner as to secure him its permanent possession.’”[2]
The most common biblical example used to show the problem of theodicy is Job-an innocent man who suffers. In the story Job demands to know, again and again, why God is allowing such injustice to happen in the world. Some scholars, such as John Hartley, describe the event as a kind of cosmic court-case that Job is attempting to bring before God. Job takes an attitude, as does Hall is his song, that God will give and take away, but we choose to accept both good and adversity from God (Job 2:10).
The song is an interesting piece on how Hall interprets suffering (which is somewhat different from Miller’s view in Hold Fast). Hall believes God is who he is “no matter where I am.” In other words, no matter how bad the situation becomes, God is still God. This may sound a bit too axiomatic at first glance, but Hall is trying to get across the deep truth that God is still sovereign in the midst of suffering. Hall upholds God’s sovereignty even when it seems like God is the one doing the evil. How does Hall justify such a view? Hall justifies it by suggesting that the same one who allows evil in the world is the same God who holds every “tear” in his hand. The same God who seems to be allowing evil is intimately involved with our suffering as well (this again is an indirect reference to the God who suffers with us as found in the book of Hebrews).
After the first chorus, Hall remembers a time similar to the present when he was struggling and God “raised me up again.” If it happened in the past, Hall does not understand why God would not be raising him up again now. In the bridge we find some semblance of the hope that we found in other Christian songs we have already looked at when Hall reminds us that our help “come from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.” Even if in the present we do not fully comprehend why such things are happening, we still have the presence and power of the Lord.
The song is making direct reference to the idea that God does not change, and this is very important to the overall understanding of Christian theology today. Although there are various places in the Bible where God does change his mind, Hall and others emphasize the fact that God does not change. No matter what happens to us, God is still God. This is a subject we will hopefully delve more into the future.
“There are some churches which say ‘for us the cross is empty’ and I think they may be saying more than they mean to”
-Craig Keen
The torture of Jesus, as considered over the years, has become about as important to me as his death. Although placing Jesus’ death in the realm of abstract thought can be easy, the thought of torture could not be more concrete. How often do you think of the torture and death of Jesus as an injustice? Perhaps you are used to thinking of Jesus’ death as just “part of the plan.” The idea of Jesus dying for my sins works out well abstractly, but if you bring it back down to earth, you are saying that his death was not only divinely ordained, but that it was God’s plan for an innocent man to be whipped, beaten, mocked and executed by an oppressive power. We should see this as a terrible injustice which we can find and recognize in the surrounding world. Jesus being whipped and nailed to a cross becomes a symbol (though the word “symbol” is not nearly strong enough) of oppressed peoples all throughout the world and throughout history. Thus we cannot ignore “the least of these” any longer.
This is the incarnation: the violation of the rights of God and people, and the vindication of God and people over their oppressors through resurrection. If we are followers of Christ we must recognize this event and the events of oppression we see all around us, not as necessary for the greater good but as displays of evil to which there must be a response. The torture, death, and resurrection of Jesus carry huge implications for the salvation of the world. God responded to Jesus’ torture and death (though he didn’t stop it from happening) by vindicating him through resurrection. How will he respond to the torture and death of the oppressed? He does it by way of vindication. Yes, this should make the oppressor nervous.
Was the death of Jesus also about the forgiveness of sin? Jesus said it himself, that his shed blood was for the forgiveness of sin (Mat 26:28). On the cross (once again keeping incarnation in mind) Jesus forgives even those who oppress him. I cannot even express the power of those words, “forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.” Jesus ushers in a revolutionary response to oppression. It’s not violent revolution or systemic overthrow. It is forgiveness. God forgives the oppressor-all those working against him. But it is not the sort of forgiveness which gets us off the hook so we can simply live comfortable and ignorant lives. Our calling is to live lives of forgiven people-to live lives worthy of the gospel. Our calling is what Jesus said it was-”as the Father sent me, so I am sending you” (John 20:21). Our calling is to follow Jesus to torture, to death, and to resurrection. Our calling, as forgiven people, is to usher in a culture of forgiveness. Our call is to see Jesus in the oppressed-in the “least of these” (Matthew 25).
“Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son.’” Most of us are familiar with the story found in Matthew 22, right? We went over it in Sunday School on (you guessed it!) Sunday. But so many new ideas started to reveal themselves to me while I was reading.
The story starts with a typical Jewish custom of the king calling on those whom he invited. So he calls on his friends. They “refused to come.” A little surprising to say the least. Let’s call this Invitation #1.
More servants are sent, because obviously these people don’t understand how good the food is. But they don’t really seem to care much either. In fact, some even decided that they didn’t care so much that they killed the servants (a logical course of action). This made the king mad (to say the least). It’s one thing to say no to a party twice, but quite another to literally kill the messenger. We will refer to this as invitation #2.
The king sends out servants a last time, but this time not to the invited ones. They are told to go to the street corners and invite anyone they can find (Invitation #3). The servants continue to obey - they get good people, bad people, and I assume the okay people (I like to refer to them as the purgatory people… sorry - bad joke).
When the king looks at his guests, he notices a guy who seems to have a wardrobe malfunction, and sends him to hell.
(Actually, if you want to know what really happens, see Matthew 22:1-14.)
So here’s what I’m thinking. The first invite gave me the image of Eden: God setting aside a place for us to have communion with Him. Why would anyone pass it up, right? Well, we all know what happened just two chapters later. Adam rejected the invitation. We rejected the invitation. The second is representative of Torah. God asks again: “Why don’t you just come and join me?” And yet, ultimately the Israelites decide that Torah is not for them. Israel rejected the second invitation. The third invitation is the prophetic invitation to see that “the king” is pretty mad. So Jesus is introduced. And if you actually read anything about Jesus in the gospels, you will find in no time that he extended this invitation to the poor, to the outcast-the previously uninvited. The call to communion with Yahweh is not only for the select few anymore. The select few didn’t want to come. We didn’t want to come.
So lots and lots of people are coming to the party now, but notice that none of them were originally invited (kind of scary, right?). But there is a man who doesn’t belong. Somehow he slipped in, wasn’t wearing wedding clothes, and the king throws him out. There are lots of directions I could go with just this: who invited him and didn’t tell him about the clothes? They must feel bad. Or maybe: is that a description of hell that he is sent to? No… I want to focus on the bigger issue of the story. This man missed out on the banquet because he wasn’t dressed properly. Bringing in the metaphor, this man missed out on the kingdom of heaven because he didn’t take care of something relatively basic.
I have linked “us” with the Israelites because it is us who break Shalom. We ignore Torah. We decide that food prepared by the God of the universe is just…eh-not really for us.
It takes beggars to appreciate this food. It takes the humble to say yes to the invitation. It takes the broken, the outcast, the ones that no one cares about, to admit, “Hey, I could go for a meal right now with somebody…it’s all I have going for me.” Maybe this is why a few chapters earlier Jesus said that it is the “poor in spirit” who actually have the kingdom of heaven.
And then there’s a poor man who wasn’t wearing wedding clothes… Maybe he couldn’t afford them. If so, that servant would be responsible for the hell he ends up going through (pardon the figurative language). Or maybe one of the invited would have been able to buy him some proper attire.
Or maybe that’s not the case. Maybe the guy was a slob. Maybe he was lazy.
At this particular point in the series, we are looking at our first song called Made to Worship, a song written by Chris Tomlin. Please read the song and mediate on it before reading the rest of the post.
This song suggests that before creation God “stepped into time” and “wrote the story of his love for everyone.” The idea that God “stepped into time” suggests the theological idea that God lived outside of time until he chose to come into a world governed by laws of time and create the known universe. What is the story that he writes? It is a “story of love.” Resultantly, our hearts should be “filled with wonder…as we always remember” that “you and I are made to worship.” The first verse is, however, quote confusing until one thinks about what Chris Tomlin is referring to. Because of the vagueness of the lyrics, we have to assume that if God came down “before the light” or “before the day,” Tomlin is referring to God stepping down to create the heavens and the earth. In other words, before the world was created, God wrote a story. Notice the past tense of the story. The story is already written.
From the perspective of the story already being written, humans then must then ask what the design of a human is within the story of God. Our hearts are to be filled with wonder at the remembrance of this already written story unfolding before our eyes as we worship God. The story that God-as the chorus goes-is one where we are called to love, one where we are “forgiven and free,” one where we are “embrace surrender” while choosing “to believe…who we were meant to be.” We cannot, in other words, change the divine story because we are but players in the larger already written salvation story. But as we love one another, forgive one another, find freedom, and embrace this story in utter surrender, we realize who it is that we were “meant to be.”
The question still remains, who is it that we are meant to be? What story has God written that demands such total abandon? In the second verse, Tomlin reiterates the first by reminding us “all we have…is a gift from God.” The story that God has written is, in some mystical sense, a gift-from an all powerful God who gives away his own image to his own creatures-that we must receive. The gift itself is when we have our eyes opened and see “the majesty and glory of the king.” It is this story, this experience of the king-this utter lostness in the grandeur of the king-that Tomlin says our hearts should again find only “wonder” as we stare in the divine story. This very vision of God is what Tomlin says is worth total worship, total abandon, and total commitment. This vision-this glimpse of the almighty-is what we are called to worship. It is in this story that we find meaning to our own story.
The bridge of the song is a picture of all humanity, all creation, and all the world bowing before the glory and majesty of this king we are speaking off. The bridge prophetically calls all people to the king of kings and the Lord of Lords. It is a picture of parousia-the return of the almighty God-calling all creatures to return to his holy name.
What then could such a song teach us about the theology of the modern church? One particularly noticeable item off the top is the lack of traditional theological language-created over the centuries of the church-within the songs. There is no mention of the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son (or even Jesus), the Spirit, the Virgin birth, election, or any other distinctly Christian doctrine. This song could fit many different religious beliefs. References to “God on high” and “Glory of the king” are both references that could be changed to refer to Allah on high or the glory of Allah the king and still work. These could reference the almighty Braham-by whose force the world stays together-and how we can share communion with him as we meditate upon and see him as he is. In seeing love for one another, embracing our destiny surrender, and practicing forgiveness we could also be Jewish, Buddhist, or even Gnostic.
Chris Tomlin intentionally (or unintentionally if he is unaware) distances himself from the theological language of his particular religion. The “love story” in the first verse is a “song for everyone.” Tradition and the scripture, however, do not appropriate such vague speech. If there is freedom, it is found in Christ. If there is justification, it is found in Christ. If there is hope, it is found in the parousia, the Triune God, the hope of heaven, in the patriarchs, in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ and within the kingdom of God. None of these, however, are mentioned in the song. If anything, we have learned that while many Christian worship songs are rich in imagery, they are poor in theological traditional value.
Second, we note the importance within Tomlin’s theology of experience. We can “know” all the things in the first verse-that God created-but if our hearts are not “filled with wonder” at the experience of seeing the “king of majesty,” we have not yet fully experienced the presence of God. It is in such seeing and vision that we truly experience God. There is no call to obedience. There is a vague call to “worship,” a vague call to “love,” and a vague call to live as one “forgiven and free,” but what do these things mean. These ideas of worship, love, forgiveness, freedom and surrender are only given meaning by the theological language behind them. As a result, it is up to the worshipper to fill in the theological gaps. But even this is something that we can learn about modern worship-they do not want to provide all the answers. In the midst of experience, Tomlin is allowing space for the worshipper to interpret the lyrics for himself or herself in the midst of their own circumstances.
Such practices have their pros and cons. For instance, worship can mean a number of different things to a number of different people. Michael Spencer has recently written a wonderful article on how “freedom in worship” can mean so many different things depending on the denomination one enters into. The major con of such an interpretive practice is that the leaders of a church can make the idea of being “made to worship” whatever they want it to mean. Tomlin’s vague theological language can be used by cunning pastors to mean something other than what Tomlin originally had meant for a song. Such practices though are almost inevitable, however, because many worship songs are attempts-as Tomlin is doing here-to bring a mystical idea down to earth. Such ideas cannot always be expressed concretely. In fact, such concreteness may sometimes take away from the power of a song.
There is also the positive of such a practice that songs can become malleable to many different worship settings. Tomlin’s song can focus on the surrender of the song, on the majesty of the song, on the centrality of worship in the song, on the centrality of love in the song or any other part of the song. The song can be changed and manipulated by what the pastor has emphasized that particular morning because the song is vague enough to cover a variety of topics.
Thus we have with Tomlin a theologically limited, but at the same experiential worship song.
Jeremy Camp comes from a Calvary Chapel background (probably the largest nondenominational denomination in America) so his lyrics usually keep pretty close to Calvary Chapel’s very conservative theology. Whatever your opinion of Calvary Chapel may be, this is a good thing. His theology is often very clearly stated and is in close correlation to the confession of his tradition. In this way he is a model for Christian artists.
Many Christian artists, as we have noted here on Chris Tomlin’s song Made to Worship, water down their theology, bear no direct ties to any specific tradition, and feel very little tie to any specific confession within their traditions. Christian music can be wit the label “Christian” can be so misleading because it does not account for the huge umbrella Christianity encompasses. Without being directly affiliated with one of these traditions, the theology in lyrics are not in associated with the confession of the church. The music we use in church for worship should express, in some way, the confession of the church. But, since some artists are called “Christian artists” we blindly sing their songs, no matter how shallow or meaningless the lyrics might be.
Jeremy Camp, being directly connected to a specific ecclesiological tradition, becomes less misleading in his title as a Christian artist and should probably be called a Calvary Chapel artist.
His song from WOW 2008 is called “What it Means”:
I’ve been here a thousand times before
Face down on the floor
Wondering how I even reached this place again
But, You have shown so endlessly, how Your love pours over me
No picture can re-create the beauty that I see
Show me what it means, to live my life a sacrifice
If only I would realize how much it took to pay the price
I know I’d always give, everything to You
I want this world to see
Your perfect majesty
Reflecting from my life this brilliant poetry
Written all over this place
The signs of all creation that You breathed
Words can’t even state how much You mean to me
I want to face my very crime
Of not giving all of mine
But I can feel the hope You bring to me
This song begins with a poetic image of someone who has reached some place of hardship or struggle in their life and, in the midst of this hopeless moment, remembers the faithfulness of God. Then he seeks God’s wisdom; “Show me what it means, to live my life a sacrifice If only I would realize how much it took to pay the price.” Though this is left open enough to mean something less specific, this seems like an allusion to the penal substitution view of the atonement, a specific view among many. Penal substitution suggests that Jesus, on the cross, was paying a debt owed to God. It was not his own debt, but the debt the human race owed to God because of their sinfulness. He sacrificially chose to pay this price so that the human race could be redeemed and receive eternal life. In a commendably healthy way, Jeremy Camp unites substitutionary atonement with the idea that Jesus didn’t only “die in our place” so that we wouldn’t have to, but also showed how we are to give our lives away as he did on the cross. For Camp, the cross not only shows the price that Jesus paid for us, but also calls the Christ follower to give back to God-truly a paradox. The rest of the song stems from this paradox. Camp realizes that the “brilliant poetry” of God is a life of sacrifice.
Within all of Camp affirms creation as something “written all over this place” when we see “the signs of all creation that You breathed.” The line is not common dispensationalist escapism which, rather than hoping for creation, expects it to burn away. Though Camp, once again, is not specific enough for us to be sure, he affirms creation as God’s “breath.” Thus, Camp may be parting with Calvary Chapels historically dependent upon dispensationalist eschatology.
Overall the song’s theological intention is to draw together Jesus’ sacrificial choice with the life to which we are to aspire. Since the song is primarily about sacrifice (once again, the specifics are open-ended) the last line feeling “the hope You bring to me” is ironic.Lodged within another paradox, Camp reminds us of the tension within sacrifice that comes through both struggle and hope. There is hope within sacrifice, an unlikely hope which is only possible through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. There is hope as we participate in the crucifixion because of hopeful expectation of the resurrection.
Over the next few weeks, a team of us is taking time to slow down and analyze the theological significance of the contemporary Christian music from WOW 2008. This page will be updated as more and more posts come about. After we have finished analyzing the songs, we plan to write a cohesive paper that brings together all of the ideas here. Below are the list of the songs we have already analyzed. If there is no link, it means we have not gotten to that particular song yet.
To everyone who’s hurting
To those who’ve had enough
To all the undeserving
That should cover all of us
Please do not let go
I promise there is hope
Hold fast
Help is on the way
Hold fast
He’s come to save the day
What I’ve learned in my life
One thing greater than my strife
Is His grasp
So hold fast
Will this season ever pass?
Can we stop this ride?
Will we see the sun at last?
Or could this be our lot in life?
Please do not let go
I promise you there’s hope
You may think you’re all alone
And there’s no way that anyone could know
What you’re going through
But if you only hear one thing
Just understand that we are all the same
Searching for the truth
The truth of what we’re soon to face
Unless someone comes to take our place
Is there anyone?
All we want is to be free
Free from our captivity, Lord
Here He comes
In this next section we are going to be looking at MercyMe’s hit Hold Fast. When Bart talks about the song, he told us that he wrote the chorus after seeing a really bad wreck on the freeway from his tour bus. If I were to talk about the song at length I would be repeating many of the things I said in my last post on Third Day’s song Mountain of God (if you have not read that post, I would suggest reading that post first). They are similar in the sense that they both deal with the songwriter suggesting that life is bad now, but life in the future looks better. What is uniqueness and centrality of the song comes from the hope found in it. There is a call “hold fast” because “help is on the way.”
There has been a central eschatological vision within the church universal over all time that centers on this message of “hope.” The message is basically that in the midst of pain and suffering there is a better hope for the future-that the present pain is not an eternal pain. In the book of Hebrews, for instance, says that, although things may be bad, we have a high priest who sympathizes with us, and we have a whole host of patriarchs who have undergone similar struggles. We are called to the same struggle, living in the hope that the parousia (the coming of God) will come soon to relieve us. We live in the imminent hope that Jesus Christ will return and “save the day” (as Bart says in his song). In the song, the theological value emanating from the song is that “greater than my strife is his [God's] grasp.”
The bridge is especially designed to pull us more into the eschatological hope of the parousia. In it, Bart attempts to move beyond each individual “feeling alone” to a unifying movement where “we are all the same.” In what sense does Bart mean we are all the same? We are all the same because we all “search for the truth.” But again, what is this truth? Bart outlines the truth as “what we’re soon to face unless someone takes our place” (a clever rhyme) because all we want is to “be free.” In other words, the truth is that when the Lord took our place on the cross, we are freed from “captivity.”
There are two allusions at play here: (1) the substitutionary atonement model; and (2) Exile. The first-substitutionary atonement-is the theological belief that Jesus died on the cross so when we face the parousia, if we have believed on and accepted Jesus’ sacrifice, we will not have to die for our sins and be put into an eternal Hell in separation from God. The freedom that Bart finds is freedom from sin. The second allusion, what Bart calls “captivity,” is probably a reference to the Jewish exile, where they too were waiting in hope that a savior would come to save them from the Roman Empire. All in all, the song seems to center on this eschatological waiting.
But this is also where the song becomes a bit muddled. Substitutionary atonement is not something one has to wait for. The atonement took place on the cross. In this sense, if this is the theological framework Bart is working from, there is confusion in his theological language. At one point, Bart is saying they “want” to be free (in the present), but at another point he references that someone must come to take our place. This someone was the person of Jesus Christ, it has already happened, it is finished. If Bart is referring to the parousia this is one thing, but he is seems to clearly referring to Jesus’ atonement in another portion of the song. Thus, we cannot be quite sure what Bart means to accomplish by means of the song itself.
We will note, however, that this is the first song of the three we have looked at where the Christian songwriter references a “Lord” (Tomlin references “king” but king is not a specifically Christian image). But we still must admit that Lord can refer to any number of things. For instance, it could refer to Braham. It could refer to Allah. We are beginning to note a general trend that Christian songwriters seem to be wary of referencing Christian scripture and tradition within their music. I am still not quite sure what to think of this yet or how to interpret such omissions in contemporary Christian music.
