Christendom vs. The World in song lyrics
Just a small project I'm working on. I want to look at how Christian (music specifically for now) contrasts the world (life before/without Christ) and life within Christianity. I think the portrayal of the world as hopeless and full of despair was what made me so terrified to leave my faith, made me feel that the second I left I would become suicidal, when the opposite has been true.
DC Talk, Since I Met You: Without=lonely, void in my soul, giant hole, nothing made sense, darkness; With=love, alright, light
At every party and as far as anybody knew - everything was cool, but
The truth was bottled up inside of me
I was as lonely as a man could be
And my 200 friends couldn't fill the void in my soul
It was a giant hole
Nothing made any sense
I thought there would never be an end
Then love came knocking at my door
(chorus)
Since I met You I've been alright
You turn all my darkness into light
Since I met You I've been okay, I've been alright
PFR, Without You: Without=hate, meaningless; With: love, change of the heart, singing, [meaningful]
like love holding the hand of hate you choose to love me anyway
it doesn't mean anything without you
just words that i say without you
without your spirit to sing
of this change of the heart that you bring
without you it doesn't mean anything
Caedmon's Call, Thankful: Without=incapable, stillborn, dead, shackled, transgression, sin; With=redemption, [resurrection], hear, walk
I am thankful that I'm incapable
Of doing any good on my own
'Cause we're all stillborn and dead in our transgressions
We're shackled up to the sin we hold so dear
So what part can I play in the work of redemption
I can't refuse, I cannot add a thing
'Cause I am just like Lazarus and I can hear Your voice
I stand and rub my eyes and walk to You
Because I have no choice
Clay Crosse, Sold Out Believer: Without=[aimless], forget, lose, beg, steal, helpless stray, waste; With=truth, follow, love
You can live your life in a different world
Spend your time lookin' for a different girl
Carry on like there ain't no tomorrow
You can take your mind to a different plane
Push it to the edge and forget your name
Lose it all and you will beg, steal or borrow
But I don't want to live that way
Be another helpless stray
I'm lookin' for the truth today
And it's somethin' I've been prayin' for
[Chorus]
I wanna be a sold out believer
I wanna follow my Lord completely
I don't wanna waste another day
I gotta love Him all the way
Plumb, God-shaped Hole: Without: hole, restless, searching, void, gray, empty longing, cynical, something missing
There's a God-shaped hole in all of us
And the restless soul is searching
There's a God-shaped hole in all of us
And it's a void only he can fill
Does the world seem gray with empty longing
Wearing every shade of cynical
And do you ever feel that
There is something missing?
That's my point of view...
These sentiments are usually set up in some form of a testimony, which follows a pattern of 1) this is how bad my life was like without Christ, 2) this is how I became converted, 3) this is how great my life is with Christ. After hearing literally thousands of stories in this form, imagine contemplating moving the opposite direction, from life with Christ to life without Christ. Obviously that would be a move from a good life to a bad, hopeless, waste of a life.
This is what I wrote on September 8th, 2003, when I was getting ready to make the jump out of the faith:
I am afraid that I might be heading towards a time that I would ditch on Christianity, as many of my closest friends have done. It scares me and hurts me because so much of my self is wrapped up in this endeavour and I don't know who I am without it. I'm not sure what the point of anything is without it. I don't want life without Christ, it is entirely unattractive to me. Sometimes I fear that the choice is between Jesus and suicide. The thought of ditching on it fills me with sadness, with grief, and it is strong and potent and I fear that people don't understand that.
These stories are everywhere, in testimonies, in sermons, in the Bible (especially Paul's writings), in worship music, in regular music, in every-day conversation. One could argue that this discourse is in place to protect the interests of the church. As long as people are afraid to leave, they will stay and will continue to contribute in terms of money, volunteering, higher congregation numbers, etc. Of course, the church's ideology is that life is really like that -- life without Christ can be nothing but hopeless. That's why there is such a big emphasis on evangelism, they want to rescue people from their hopeless lives and give them good lives. Ideology rarely matches reality, though, it represents the interests of the dominant elite and explains and justifies those interests.
posted by Heather Ann @ 8:39 AM
4 Comments:
Of course I too was exposed to these patterns of language. Upon leaving, and getting to a level footing, I found that message was not true and in fact the opposite was true for me. I think what makes these messages so powerful and why they are everywhere is because of death. Death is like the great punctuation mark on life, and it stands as a monolithic "sure thing" in a life that is otherwise much of the time chaotic and seemingly out of our control. Because Christianity can conceive of no other way to handle the question of death, save its own assumptions, it sees a life outside of that idea as utterly hopeless in the end. I think that's part of why this language is used; it's part of a greater philosophical understanding that is being conveyed through personal experience and a hopeful belief in the promises of that philosophy.
Hey H.a., hows it going?
I want to respond to your post,b ut not sure what to say.
it seems like you have almost a hatred for christians, or I should say Christianity.
I'm currently studying Sociology, I think Linguistics sort of count as a sub category to sociology (doesn' it?) which is a social science.
You mention "Ideology rarely matches reality, though, it represents the interests of the dominant elite and explains and justifies those interests." I'm not sure if you were refering to christianity spefifically or if it was just a genral comment.
but since I've been studying in a secular institution I realized that it's not much different then it's own religion or some equielent.
Intelectuals are like thier own elite. They have thier own language, and they're are many levels that one must pass to be an intelectual. only the very few in society can come out with masters and PH.d's. so in a way your comment; ""Ideology rarely matches reality, though, it represents the interests of the dominant elite and explains and justifies those interests." is just as easily applied to education, although I suppose thats no revelation.
And of course Social Science is a science. all science aims to do is to make conclusions about us and our world through what can be measured and observed. Thats why science doesn't look at or consider the possibility of faith or God because it can niether prove nor disprove God. But of course there is only so much that man can observe and measure and much of the time science asks more questions then it answers.
I guess i just don't like being labeled 'brainwashed' because I have faith and follow a religion. Karl Marx said how religion is the opium of the people. and it can be if used in the wrong hands. but so can education, work, or anything else. It can all be used to control people if humans twist it that way.there's reason why i'm a christian too, and not because I was raised/socialized to be one, or because i went to bible college. But rationally exaplaining everything I went through to decide that christianity held absolute truth would take to long and be to boring.
anyways, i'm sure i'm not explaining myself very well
so thats all for now, and keep everyone thinking
Doug, Doug McKenzie... (you still have the best Canuck name ever!)
There is so much in your comment that I will have to take some time to ponder and then I promise to dedicate an entire post to my answer. I'm not sure if there's a character limit on comments. :)
I will say, though, that I'm glad you keep coming back here, even if you only comment when you disagree. I hope school's going well!
I went through a period were I found, became involved with, and ultimately left the Christian faith. I grew up non-religiously. Perhaps the closest thing to a religion I had was the Doaist philosophy taught in my Shaolin martial arts school.
I think what ultimately bothers me most about Christianity is that it is an immoderate religion- more dependence on God, more prayer, more tithe, is always considered, better, more holy, what have you. And it also takes the importance of life away and moves it to a secondary place- all that matters is eternal heaven or damnation, and this life is some fleeting stage of judgement. Any religion or philosophy that does not establish iteself from the viewpoint of human necessity and nature is essentially little more than a doctrine of fear or fluff, I find.
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