Dare You To Move

I fall in love with ideas.

Recently, I've been loving this analogy of tension that my friend laid out for me. He explained it like we should always be in a state of tension in one way or another. If there's nothing wrong in our lives, then the issue is that we're blind to our own shortcomings. We should always be trying to better ourselves in one way or another: faith, pride, love, trust, patience... the list goes on. Tension can also be an issue, if it's allowed to be. The stress can get the best of people (after all, tension is a kind of stress).

The tension should be "between who you are and who you could be, between how it is and how it should be"

When I first woke up to the magnitude of what it means to follow Christ, along with joy came this sense of tension.

What will you do when faced with a decision to make in your life?

Will you blow it off to ease the tension? Do you really want to look back at your life and remember how you DIDN'T rise to the challenge of bettering yourself? I dare you to move.

or

Will you let it get the best of you? Will you let the stress overcome you and ultimately prevent you from succeeding? We have to start by realizing the need to change, but we must then understand that we aren't alone. Salvation is here.

or

Will you refuse to examine your life? Realizing, consciously or not, that if you take a look at yourself, you may not like what you find. You have have to make a choice.

I dare you to move

Vice Verses

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1mVk5ZiEPc

This is the title track for the newly released album, and it's a beautiful song. He uses the ocean to describe the ups and downs of life and the duality of things. And like the ocean, this song is soothing, melodic, gentle, yet has a lot of power.

“You got your babies, I got my hearses

Every blessing comes with a set of curses”

One of the strangest and most interesting things in life is how many good things can end up being bad, or how bad things can end up doing good. Encountering obstacles in life is unanimously considered not preferable, yet through obstacles, we grow and become stronger people. And going through life with all the blessings in the world would seem to be a great thing, yet we all know the stereotype of the snobby rich person who complains when they don’t get something they want. Nobody likes that person, because they haven’t developed themselves through trials and obstacles in life.

“A little resurrection every time I fall”

It’s amazing that God uses shortcomings of ours to strengthen us. There’s that one verse about God being made perfect in our weaknesses (2 Cor 12:9), and that other verse somewhere in Romans about God working all things for the good of his glory (both verses were paraphrased of course). He delights to make us strong through our weaknesses, if we’ll let Him.

One thing I really love about this song, and music in general, is that it doesn’t have to offer the answer or the solution to anything. In this song:

“Where is God in the night sky?

Where is God in the city light?

Where is God in the earthquake?

Where is God in the genocide?”

These questions aren’t answered in the song, and the song isn’t about hope even. It’s an expression, an authentic collection of thoughts and emotions. I don’t think we always need to be given the solution or the answer. Sure I could say, “Well, genocide is a result of sin, which God can’t be a part of …” but I think sometimes we answer things too quickly. Even if you feel you know the answer to these types of questions, it’s beneficial to meditate on them, it leads to even more questions: “why does God let things like genocide happen? Why doesn’t God just get rid of all the super evil people out there? Is that God’s character?” Asking these questions leads to a deeper understanding than throwing a quick fix solution at it. Asking questions can often be more insightful than getting answers. Jesus knew that, Rob Bell knows that, the guy who wrote the book I’m reading (“Tactics”) knows that. There’s nothing wrong with not having all the answers. After all, what would God be doing if we knew everything?

As water rises and falls with the tides, so do our lives with the changing seasons we go through. It’s a give and take; it’s the tension that is crucial in life if you want to have any kind of personal or spiritual growth.

Wholeheartedly seeking God is hard, a lot harder than simply believing that your actions don’t have consequences. We need to ask ourselves the hard questions if we want to grow. We need to never be satisfied to the point of complacency. We need to keep challenging ourselves and our beliefs, even if money has long since been a problem for you, like Switchfoot.

On Fire

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pskjyxykBiE

“But everything inside you knows there’s/More than what you’ve heard/There’s so much more than empty conversations/Filled with empty words”

I really don’t like summer/winter break. I love seeing my friends and family, but it always feels like this line of the song. The people here at home don’t get to see/experience how I’ve changed, and I don’t get to see how they’ve changed. And I won’t get to see how they’ve changed because I’ll be back at school soon anyways. Every break it’s the same “how’s college? You like it there?” I don’t blame anyone, there’s really nothing else to say. For me, breaks are like life on pause. I hate it because it always feels like my everything becomes numb from lack of exposure to deep relationships. I know there’s more, I just struggle to find it when I’m not moving anywhere.

I just got back from a missions trip to Taiwan. It’s amazing what can happen in a few weeks. “On fire” is a good two words to describe my trip. That’s one of my favorite things about God, when you serve others on His behalf, it doesn’t drain you spiritually. In fact, using your efforts and energies to serve others draws you and (hopefully) them closer to God. Sure I spent about a month lugging sound equipment all over (the northern part of) Taiwan, but all that serving others filled me with a spirit of love for other people and for God.

It’s that counter-intuitiveness that I love about God. And I think that’s why the song repeatedly uses the word “mysteries”. Part of the beauty of everything God does, I think, is that we don’t always understand it. Watching a sunset is awesome. Watching a sunset is less cool if you’re thinking about how we’re just a giant chunk of dirt spiraling a burning chunk of gas that emits light of various wavelengths and only appears red because the red light wavelengths are longer than the blue and therefore can travel better to our eyes when looking along the horizon.

“Everything inside me looks like/Everything I hate/You are the hope I have for change/You are the only chance I’ll take”

This single-minded attitude of desiring God to change you from the inside out is what brings people to a place of being on fire for God. And even though declaring that God is “the only chance I’ll take” is lyrically cool sounding and probably not theologically the best way of putting, it captures the idea of trusting in God alone. Trusting in this world can’t and won’t always help or even be able to change you for the better. Trusting in this world and not God is a great way to put out Godly fires.

Incomplete and Company Car

As I grow older, I realize how much learning is done by just living. Yet, while I grow and learn more each day, I’ve also noticed how much we fake it. We fake our knowledge, our coolness, our whatever. It’s in the little things we say to the big things we do. Ever taken a test with a question you don’t completely know the answer to? What do you do? You write what you do know and act like you own the subject. You may even fluff it up or take a stab in the dark and hope you’re right. In an interview, would you ever say, “I don’t know”? Or would you just start talking like a politician and suffer the minor loss of respect you just got from not answering their question? It’s like we’re being taught that saying “I don’t know” is unacceptable and means that you’re dumb. But in and of ourselves, we’re all incomplete, imperfect, and a bit lost. Like many things in life, I think acknowledging that we’re not always right, perfect, or complete is the first step in fixing the problem.

This is exactly what the song Incomplete is addressing. And the story unfolds a bit more when we look at Company Car. In this catchy, upbeat song, a man goes through a realization that he’s not what he’d hoped he’d be. He’s got what the world considers great, but it’s not what he wants. “I’ve become one with the ones that I’ve never believed in”. “I’ve got hotels on park place and boardwalk. For 200 bucks I’ll pass go, but oh, life’s taken its toll. Have I won monopoly, but forfeit my song?” I truly believe that everything in this world is not enough to fully satisfy for your entire life. You can get by when things change though. Like if you own a country, it may become not enough for you, so you go on a power trip and take over a neighboring country. In the end though, that country won’t be enough either. James Bond knew this (The World is not Enough).

So then what is it to become someone? I believe it is to lose yourself. "Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 10:39). The best someone you can be is someone who is letting Christ take charge of his or her life. Some of the best things that have happened to me have happened because I trusted that things will work out and that Christ will be with me always (see the last (ish?) verse of Matthew). While my parents and the logical part of my brain told me to try and get an internship this summer so I’ll have a better professional career, I decided to go on a missions trip for the first half of this coming summer. So instead of relaxing this semester and then making money over the summer, I’ve spent this semester raising money knowing that I won’t be able to make money this summer (because my previous internship wanted a full summer intern so I couldn’t go back there). Not only has my trust in God that everything will go over well paid off amazingly in my fundraising, but also in my hopes to invest in a future career. The internship I previously had told me that due to a special circumstance, they could use an extra hand for about a month of the summer (during the time I’m home). When you give things to God, whether time, money, etc, He blesses you so abundantly. This includes your life.

One more point I want to bring up… THIS INCLUDES YOUR LIFE

The Setting Sun

I chose to do something different this time. In attempting to describe what the song means to me I realized that the words Jon used do a better job than the words I use. So I decided to rearrange the lyrics to this song in a poem ish manner that I think describes the song well.

I’ve got a wound that doesn’t heal

My wound goes deeper than the skin

My hope runs underneath it all

They’re selling shares of me again

I’m not sure which of me is real

My hope runs underneath it all

Let the weak say I am strong

Let the right say I was wrong

Let us find where we belong

It won’t be long, I belong somewhere past the setting sun. Finally free, finally strong, somewhere back where I belong

My hope runs underneath it all, the day that I’ll be home

It won’t be long, I belong somewhere past the setting sun

As the words unfold, the emotion is expressed via guitars, drums, and some subtle effects. In describing his current state, the author uses phrases like, “I’ve got a wound that doesn’t heal”. So powerful. It’s a state of incompleteness and longing. And the contemplative guitars describe this state about as good as the words. But with hope, the author takes solace in the life that is to come. It’s a life of completeness and beauty, like a setting sun that is beautiful and completes the day.

My hope runs underneath it all, the day that I’ll be home

It won’t be long, I belong somewhere past the setting sun

Such is our hope in Christ

The Beautiful Letdown

“Easy living, please, come on and let me down”

Being a Christian can be (and sometimes is) viewed by people as a crutch, a way to make yourself feel good believing in a loving greater power somewhere out there. I can understand where that view comes from, but I think that not believing in something can be an even bigger crutch. To have a set of beliefs that you decided make sense mean that you can believe whatever you wish. Granted, the goal would be truth, but I don’t believe for a second that anyone can fully objectively figure out the meaning of life on their own (or with the help of other people’s ideas/beliefs/philosophies). Christianity on the other hand, while preaching a message of good news, also teaches some things that can be hard to swallow. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans something). Our society has this idea of being a good person. This idea varies from being a good person compared to the average person, being a good person compared to thieves and murderers, being a good person compared to your friends, etc. But the bible teaches that if you’ve looked at a woman lustfully, you’ve committed adultery in your heart. I’ve never had sex… and while I’d love to use that to say that I’m a good person because of it, I’ve looked lustfully at women far too many times for that to be true. This can apply to many different sins. Our nature is to fail at living up to God’s standards. Focusing too much on this aspect of Christianity can and will cause a negative view of yourself.

On the flip side, there’s the good news! Yay! In spite of all our failures and shortcomings, God made a way for justice and love to prevail. Though the punishment for sin is death (Romans something else) we may live through the resurrection of Christ. Focusing only on the fact that God loves us can produce a distorted image of God, one that would lead to a style of living that causes others to view such a faith as a crutch. But alas, there is a healthy balance, a beautiful letdown.

I believe that achieving a true (or true enough, assuming we’ll never fully understand God while here on earth) understanding of God is beautiful. I’ve seen the transition happen in a few people during my lifetime. The transition from knowing about God to knowing God, and beautiful it is!

I absolutely love this song. The music does a fantastic job (like always) of describing the mood/state of mind. The lyrics don’t follow a standard song structure, but they reuse a couple lines a lot. It changes enough to be interesting and different, but the message is the same throughout. There isn’t really a story or a progression, just a deep point to be made with just a few words. The lyrics really are cool, and I encourage you to look at them.

We can spend forever striving to find the finite differences between right and wrong, between viewing God as love and nothing else or as someone who has standards that we fall short of, but we will never perfectly find the balance. As we already know, we aren’t perfect and we can’t be. We may get really good at being humble or something, but we’ll never be perfect. So while this balance of how to view God is definitely important and worth considering and applying to your life, don’t get hung up on it. Getting hung up on little things is how bad things begin (like the “God hate’s gay’s” heresy)

Remember, “life is still worth living”

Yesterdays

Recently I was watching a TV show where the people were asked to figure out what a love song looks like to them. They all came up with songs that weren’t anything special, all written about happy love (y’know, the sappy Hollywood version of love). So I began to think about what songs I know that bring love to mind whenever I listen to them. After some thought, I landed on Yesterdays (believe it or not, I wasn’t just looking at Switchfoot songs, it just happened to come to this one). This may be an unlikely choice for a love song, but I feel it has more to say about love than say that silly song from the Parent Trap when they spell out l.o.v.e. and assign mildly appropriate words to each letter.

           

Ever heard that talk is cheap? Well it is. The problem is when you actually believe the words coming out of your mouth; it’s hard to show your feelings because you could easily just be flapping your gums. Ever hear someone say, “I love you” and think to yourself, based on the way they said it, “that sounds like a formality”. They may truly love the person, but they could just be throwing it out there in the same way you’re supposed to quickly respond with “no” when asked by a woman if something makes them look fat (regardless of how they actually look). Talk is so cheap in fact, I’ll bet that there are a number of love songs out there that were written based on a simple, shallow crush. I’ll go further and say that some popular songs out there were probably just formulated and not actually felt at all. So what the heck separates the heartfelt love songs from the fake ones!?

           

The reason I feel this song embodies a love song is because it’s sad, it’s a lamentation. It’s easy to sing about happy love but when something goes wrong, “if it doesn’t break your heart it isn’t love” (Yet by Switchfoot). Sure Nsync’s Tearin up my heart has the line “It’s tearin up my heart when I’m with you. And when we are apart I feel it too”, but seriously? If you’ve ever heard that song, you know that it’s not really different from their other poppy songs. I love Yesterdays because it actually makes me feel (that’s a feat). It’s so passionate and heart wrenching. It’s about death, yet the only feeling that I can pick up on is love. “Every lament is a love song” (Yesterdays).

If the words don’t do it for you, the music should. The bass and guitar(s) work together beautifully in the verses to create a feeling of sadness, of loneliness, of drifting through life in a big grey blur. And in the bridge, everything cries out (especially the vocals) with so much feeling that simply can’t be held back. While it’s sad, it’s simple, clear love.

Don’t get me wrong, love has plenty of ups. If it didn’t I’d question if it’s worth it to love at all. But in the midst of all the phony love songs out there, to me, this one shines through. What does a love song look like to you? Does it sounds like, “baby, baby, baby, oh”, or does it sounds like, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound”? Think about it.

Connect With The Spine

Considering this isn’t a song that will be heard by many more than Switchfoot fans, I’m going to link you to the song on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkazZXUptxU

This song is pretty short, with few lyrics. It’s also pretty musically simple in that there aren’t too many instruments being played and they pretty much stick with a simple melody the entire song. Though the shallow sound during the verses does a nice job of reflecting their message. All in all, the sound doesn’t fit into the typical Switchfoot mold; the lyrics, however, are a different story.

Celebrities live in a different world than we do. You might think it’s nice that they have loads of money, you may mock them constantly for something they’ve done that was plastered all over the news, or you might even idolize them because they’ve been in some sick action flicks. Whatever the case, they exist in a world where the majority of the public thinks of them (and probably would treat them, if ever an interaction occurred) as an object for their entertainment, pleasure, etc. They even end up dating each other quite a bit, probably because meeting people that treat you like a person is hard to do when you’re Tom Cruise or Jennifer Aniston.

Why the tangent you might ask? To that I would answer: 1) I’m not even sure it counts as a tangent if I never began describing what the song means, and 2) as it happens, that is what the song’s about. Not celebrities in particular, but rather not treating people as people. Often we treat people as objects. For example, I remember someone getting upset when they heard that Megan Fox wasn’t going to be in the 3^rd Transformers movie. Another example would be politicians, because a tiny percentage of the voting population will know the politician personally, their image has to be a friendly face with the look of trust. They very well may be trustworthy, but it doesn’t matter because we aren’t treating them as people, but as a nice smiling face that wants to make some changes. Granted, with the politics example, there are those who look at their policies and beliefs and such, but if their favorite politician were some bitter looking old man, do you think they would win too many elections?

Getting to the point, we sometimes treat people as a hot body or a friendly face. “I’m sick of the faces, the scene and the light / We’ll be fine when the faces connect with the spine”. Once we start seeing people as more than just a face or a body, and start seeing them as a whole person, fine doesn’t even describe how much better off we’d be.

I’m currently in the middle of reading a book for a professional development class I’m in called Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting out of the box, and it’s essentially about treating people as people. The book describes how you can do anything while treating someone as a person or as an object, and the outcome of your action will greatly rely on how you were thinking of the person on the receiving end of this action. Think about a fight between a couple, if the guy says sorry in a manner that is overtly sarcastic or forced, all the girl will hear is “I’m upset with you”, and rightfully so. If the guy genuinely apologizes and there is a clear tone of regret in his voice, then it will be quite apparent to the girl that he actually is sorry. The book is well done and sends a good message. The biggest impression I’ve gotten from reading this book is “ ’…“Love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no commandment greater than these.’ “. Yesterday, someone was pretty upset with her day. I was on my computer slacking off, when she got ready to leave I said, “see ya” without even glancing up at her. Realizing how impersonal that was, I then looked directly at her and asked, “Is there any way I can help?” with a happy face on, and she mirrored my expression with a clear display of appreciation. It was obvious how the second interaction went infinitely better than the first.

One of the things that bothered me about Christians when I first started to take my faith seriously was that I noticed how Christians are just like everyone else. C’mon now, I know enough scripture to understand that if we truly lived our lives as the bible teaches then we would stand out like the only thumb that isn’t sore. This is such a simple concept that many non-Christians could even tell you is from the bible. Love your neighbor as yourself. This doesn’t just mean with your actions, but with your interactions, in the way you care for how they’re doing or what they’re going through. “We’ll be fine when the faces connect with the spine”.

“Love is the revolution”

Let Your Love Be Strong/Your Love is Strong/Your Love is a Song

Everybody loves a good trilogy. As Jon has talked about, these songs sort of play off of each other. The first, Let Your Love Be Strong (LYLBS from now on) was on Oh! Gravity and was released first. Then came Your Love is Strong (YLIS) on his Spring EP solo album. Most recently is Your Love is a Song (YLIAS) on Hello Hurricane. These are all beautiful songs so I don’t mean to give them less credit by mashing them together, but rather to describe the entire story they tell.

To me these songs describe a progression. It’s a progression of thoughts, realizations, and ways of thinking. In the first song, LYLBS, the lyrics describe a want, a longing. Notice the way he uses the words “maybe” and “let” in the verses. “Maybe I’m just a little misinformed”, “Let the wars begin, let my strength wear thing”. If you haven’t picked it up yet, the “You” in all the song titles is God. The way Jon uses “maybe” and “let” gives me a feeling like he’s disconnected. He wants to see the awesomeness of God’s love do its thing. Jon knows it’s all you need. He is willing to sacrifice what he has for it. “Let the wars begin, let my strength wear thin. Let my fingers crack let my world fall apart”. I feel as though the writer is viewing God’s love from an outside perspective looking in. If these words I’m using aren’t accurately describing the way the writer is thinking/feeling, listen to the song, the music does a fantastic job of setting the proper mood.

Next comes YLIS. While LYLBS was written from the outside looking in, I believe this song is written from the inside. Rife with biblical terms such as “kingdom” and “heavens”, plus the Lord’s prayer at the end, adds up to a close look at God. It’s written by someone who feels close to God and understands that you don’t need to worry if God is on your side (or rather, if you’re on God’s side). The transition between these first two songs is a state of wondering and hoping to a state of joy. It’s an awakening to beauty of God’s love. He changes from sounding distant and a little sad to sounding alive, joyous, and even overwhelmed.

While the first song was from the outside looking in, and the next from the inside, I believe YLIAS is from the inside looking out. What I mean is that after experiencing the wonder and magnitude of pure love, he sees its effect on everything; it’s everywhere. He’s looking at life as a wonderful symphony of nature, people, everything. In the verses, he describes the things he’s experiencing. After this, he goes into the chorus of bringing it all back to what he’s really looking at. He sees everything different now, everything’s/everyone is connected through a beautiful melody (anyone else reminded of We Are One Tonight?).

When talking about God, words have a tendency to fall short (hence the beauty of the name “I Am”). Because of this, anything I write won’t do a justice. While it’s also true that nothing Jon writes will fully do a justice either, having music really helps. What I’m trying to say is try listening to these songs while reading this, it will really help portray the feeling, emotion, and passion behind the words.

We Are One Tonight

The song opens with a simple and pleasant guitar riff, accompanied by a driving beat. Then they do something pretty cool, the ending of the chorus, “tonight, tonight”, is sung during the intro. It’s nothing profound, but it’s a little different, and blends nicely with the feel of the intro riff. There’s a reason that verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus is so widely used; it works. But where would we be in life if we had that attitude about everything? Where would we be if people who engineered cell phones a few decades back said, “you know what, this brick sized phone does it’s job, let’s focus on something else.” Sure we all might pay more attention in class, but would anyone want to revert to a time when a gun was easier to conceal than a phone? Back on point, thank you Switchfoot for mixing it up, even if it means taking baby strides towards being different.

The first verse takes a turn musically from happy and joyful to cool and choppy. The verses really are cool musically, listen to the instruments. The verses are pretty simple, “I’ll rise, I’ll fall”. That about sums it up. “We built these cities to stand so tall. We’ve lost our walls.” He’s talking about these ”marvelous” things man has made. I believe these verses are about the pleasures we obtain from earthly things and what it causes our world to be like. It describes a world where we try all we want, but don’t actually accomplish anything. The music, like I mentioned earlier, is cool, but a little chaotic. It’s enjoyable, but choppy in a way. This wonderfully underlines the idea that the verses represent joys found by worldly means.

The pre-chorus’ take a look at the verses and say to them, “I don’t want you”. “I don’t want to lost it, coming down … I don’t have a soul to trust in now, with the whole world upside-down”. The state of the world as described by the verses leaves people worrying about losing things and not trusting people. This focus on the world has people losing focus on what really matters.

“We are one tonight!”

The chorus welcomes back the joyful, more full sounding music from the intro. In the same way the choppiness of the verses mirrors the writer’s state of un-fulfillment, the full sound of the music in the chorus reflects a state of satisfaction. All that mess of a world doesn’t matter, because we’re one tonight. “The world is flawed, but these scars will heal, we are one tonight”.

A bit later in the song, comes Jon saying, “slow the evening down, slow down, slow down, please slow down”. This goes right along with the idea that the world is moving too fast and going crazy. This is followed by a buildup with “the stars are coming out”. That’s so beautiful. Slow the evening down, the stars are coming out! Stop doing life at the speed of light and start moving at the speed of life, otherwise you’ll miss it and all the beautiful things along the way.

In the end, what I get from this is do life with people and for people, essentially, not for yourself. Because the alternative is for money, sex, or whatever else corrupts the greatest among us. Along with this alternative comes an un-fulfillment that will never go away without a change.

Economy of Mercy

This one was written back when you didn’t have to try as hard to get an idea of the faith of Switchfoot. While the music is nice and melodic, the beauty to this one lies within the lyrics. It begins with possibly the most curious line(s) of the song, “There’s just two ways to lose yourself in this life, and neither way is safe”. I suspect that the idea behind this is you can either give your life away or have it taken. If you’re committed to making your life better by your lonesome, you may quickly fail and have this world chew you up and spit you out. If you give your life away, one can rely on hope of a higher power. The danger in this is your higher power may be someone like Jim Jones (the drink the kool-aid guy). But you can’t really sit back and not make a decision on anything, because that’s about the same as choosing to have your life taken from you. “Those who stand for nothing, fall for anything” ~Alexander Hamilton. This verse is tied off with the idea that you can hope for the future all you want, but “we are right now” (that’s from Needle and Haystack Life, which basically spends a song on this idea), so live in the here and now. What this means is not that you should live in hope of things to come, but rather in the present, where a difference can be made right now. When you combine this live in today idea with the idea of making a choice/giving your life away, you get a pretty powerful message wrapped up nicely in four lines of an inspirational song.

The pre-chorus (“where will I find you?”) leads right into the chorus in a clever way. This may have been unintentional on Jon’s part, but I think the first line of the chorus both answers the question from the pre-chorus and acts as the beginning of the train of that that is the chorus. In the economy of mercy/
I am a poor and begging man/In the currency of grace/Is where my song begins/In the colors of Your goodness/In the scars that mark Your skin/In the currency of grace/Is where my song begins. It pretty much explains itself… beautiful eh?

Second verse, queue the colorful analogy. This verse calls us, people, “carbon shells”, “dusty frames” that “house canvases of soul”, “bruised and broken masterpieces” who “did not paint ourselves”. It’s something that’s tough to describe, but something I feel very accurately reflects the state of the world. It’s like we were beautiful once, or like we have the potential to be beautiful with a little effort. But if we’re all dusty and bruised, who can help? After all, a broken arm can’t fix a broken house. What CAN fix our lack of color and goodness is the one whose goodness is overflowing with color and majesty. If only something in this song alluded to such a being. Well what do you know, check out the chorus, “In the colors of Your goodness”. I think it’s a pretty safe assumption to say that Jon’s talking about God based off of his background (and the pre-chorus). Either way, the analogy is that we’re grayscale and boring, whereas God has so much color that we can’t even imagine the extent of His awesomeness. We’re so broken and lost, whereas God is so wonderful that we can’t even understand. When you look at a plane in the sky, it doesn’t matter if it took off only 15 minutes ago or if it is at the highest altitude possible… it’s really high. Sure you can make an educated guess based off of how big the plane looks, but in the end, it’s really high. In the same way, God is so much higher than us that we can’t comprehend His goodness. I guess comparing dusty and old to beautifully colorful is Jon’ way of bringing this enormous difference of us/God to light.

The bridge basically states the idea I was talking about in the last paragraph. “I’m lost without you here”. “You knew my name when the world was made”. He transitions from cool analogies of color and an economy of mercy to the straightforward confession of being lost without God. In the end, aren’t we all? If you said “no”, I think you meant to say “very yes”.

Ps. I apologize for any grammatically incorrect use of any symbols like “ . , etc.

Faust, Midas, and Myself

If you’ve never heard this one before, you should listen to it, it’s fantastic, one of my favorites for sure. If you have heard it before or are just lazy, listen to the first three notes. They should tell you all you need to know about the general mood of the song. Eerie, dreamy, and almost sad, in the way that a rainy day is sad.

This song could be a novel. It has quite a story packed into a 4-ish minute song. It’s about direction, temptation, and internal warfare/struggle. A bit of background … Faust comes from a story of this guy, Faust, who basically sells his soul to the devil in return for power, magic, whatever. Midas is the king who turned anything he touched into gold. Myself is good ol’ Jon Foreman (the writer).

So the song opens in describing a dream where this guy follows him (the writer) home and is mad sketchy. He proceeds to offer (I’m just going to call the main character of this story Jon, whether it is about himself or not) Jon anything he could ever dream of wanting. The song then offers the statement, “You’ve one life left to lead”, introducing the idea of direction in life to this so tempting offer. Now it gets interesting. Jon describes waking up from this dream to a world where everything is gold… and it scares him. “I don’t think this is me. Is this just a dream or really happening?” Then it goes back into “You’ve one life left to lead”. Then it explodes, sort of in the way that some life lessons hit you like a ton of bricks, into “WHAT DIRECTION?” and “I’M SPLITTING UP, THIS IS MY PERSONAL DISAFFECTION”. Would you really want to have everything you touch become gold? Midas did, look where that got him; he ended up hating his “gift”. His food turned to inedible gold, and his daughter to a golden statue. It’s sort of like being mega rich but being alone… it’s not worth it. Jon realizes that if he were to embrace this offer of anything he could ever want, he’d be left alone, with only temporary pleasures to accompany him. The next verse continues describing a world of gold and how it’s affecting Jon, “I hated what I saw, my golden eyes were dead, a thought passed through my head, a heart that’s made of gold can’t really beat at all.”

Gold comes up a lot in this song, and it’s perfect. Gold is very pretty, and rare enough for it to be valuable… but what do we do with it? We look at it. To me, gold represents a sort of shallowness. Would you be happy with all the gold in the world? King Solomon had gold … sooo much gold. Did he stare at it all day long and marvel at his wealth? He used a lot of it to build a temple for God. It was a sacrifice of his wealth; the point being that honoring God is more worthy than any possible amount of gold.

“I wanted to wake up again, without a touch of gold” followed by a dreamy chorus of “what direction” lines. This leads into another explosion of sorts with “LIFE BEGINS AT THE INTERSECTION!” That is one of my favorite Switchfoot lines, I think I’ll come back to it later. This bridge for me is an awakening, in both senses. It’s followed with a wonderful verse, “I woke up as before, but the gold was gone. My wife was at the door with a night robe on. My heart beat once or twice, and life flooded my veins. Everything had changed, my lungs had found their voice, and what was once routine was now the perfect joy.” For starters, I like how the first time he said “I woke up from my dream”, he was actually dreaming, and this time he really woke up… at least that’s how I took it. We humans adjust to things. If the water’s cold, don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. We notice change. When you wear glasses all the time don’t notice they’re there until they think about it or take them off. When we have a good life, we get used to it and can find ourselves wanting more. In this song, Jon struggles with direction, and in the end, concludes that his life as he had it was the “perfect joy”. The end, awwww.

“Life begins at the intersection” is one of my favorite lines because it’s so simple and deep (at least, deep relative to how deep my mind is able to go). If you live a preset life, are you really living? If you only do things because they’re what society/peers suggest you should do … you’re more of a sheep than a human being. Life begins when you make a choice, when you decide, “that path is where I’m going to go”. If you just go through routine day after day, if you go through motions blindly, are you really living?

Yet

“All attempts have failed, all my heads are tails.” What do you do about that? If that’s you, what can you do? Well the easy and bad answer is give up. The hard answer is to start over completely. The last thing you could do is figure out how to use what you’ve got to make it right. Several places in this album (Hello Hurricane), Jon does a good job of describing, much more dramatically than I, this situation and how the solution he chose was the latter.

The second verse basically underlines this theme of everything being backwards, but it’s an interesting array of words. “These days pass me by, I dream with open eyes. Nightmares haunt my days, visions blur my nights.” This most likely is just an awesome way to describe how life can be backwards, but I’d like to suppose, in my wildest imagination, what it could mean. Dreaming with open eyes… dreams are things our minds throw together in a boggle sort of way. Dreaming can also be having dreams or ambitions, and chasing those dreams. Imagine if your life was spent living out your dream, and you could see your dreams take form right before your eyes. I just asked you to imagine something, please do it. Imagine yourself in a dreamy state thinking about your wildest ambitions. Picture them solidifying into reality as you watch. Sounds pretty fantastic. This could have some merit to it, but it’s not exactly in step with the message of the rest of the song. Oh well, one can dream.

The last line in both the first verse adds a bit of “the end is near” to the “everything’s messed up” ideas from the rest of the verses. It goes, “I’m heading for the final precipice”. What better to add to dilemma than urgency? Time is limited, and we all know that bad things happen when we always think there’ll be more time later. I’m not sure what the urgency is, but we can all relate. Chapters in life end, and sometimes these chapters find us in situations that will only exist in this chapter. When we let the pages of life pass us by until the chapter is over, we regret things. “Live life with no regrets” could probably be best explained as try to live life intentionally and do what you want to do as opposed to sitting back and watching life blow by in the breeze.

“I’ll sing until my heart caves in”. This isn’t settling in for retirement, this is fighting for what you believe in until death do you and the world part. “I’m holding on, I’m holding on to you.” I think of all the possible mentions of God in Switchfoot songs, this one’s hard to ignore (especially when you look at it in the full context). Ok you got me, this is from the next song on Hello Hurricane, but it fits wonderfully and I believe it helps to illustrate the meaning of this song. While Jon reveals how all of his life is messed up and crazy, he further shows that it doesn’t matter what’s happening to him, he’s going to hold on to the one thing he knows, and devote his everything to that. With Everything, he will sing.

Bridge time, “If it doesn’t break your heart it isn’t love.” At first, I thought it was silly to think that all love breaks your heart, but then I challenged my own definition of what it means to break a heart. I guess it means what you use it to mean. I don’t think it should be limited to being super sad after a girlfriend or boyfriend dumps you. Now it gets personal… The biggest moment of my life was when I devoted my life to God and to be more like Jesus (literally becoming a Christ-ian). I don’t care if that sounds Christian-machine generated, it’s true. I experienced a love I’d never truly known before. That sent my emotions on a wild stampede with the final destination of awesome. If our hearts represent our state of emotions, or perhaps their structure and how they operate, then to break one’s heart opens up the possibility of reforming it. So maybe what happened to me was that perfect love broke my heart and was able to realign it more properly. In no way is this a bad thing.

So now that it makes sense, how about the specifics of his claim, “If it doesn’t break your heart it isn’t love.” If you asked, I might tell you I love my guitar, but it would be in the same sense that I love ice cream. If it was stolen, I’d be upset and frustrated… after all, I spent my own money on that, and it wasn’t exactly cheap. But in the end, whatever. If my mom died… well I’d be a wreck. I wouldn’t properly function for quite a while. Love is powerful. Real love, when taken away, is a heartbreaker. But it’s worth it, it has to be. If nothing else, it’s a taste of what pure love is, what God’s love is. And He never withdraws His love if you ask for it. So to come full circle, love breaks your heart, whether in a good constructive way or a sad (and hopefully character building) way.

All in all, thanks to Switchfoot for being able to pack so much awesome in so few words. Sorry for sort of ignoring the musical part on this one. Basically, the music does a good job of reading you the lyrics in bold.