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?