I want to tell you about a song. You might know it already, especially if you wear skinny jeans and black eye-liner, keep straight bangs that hang over one eye, and fit the introverted teenager demographic commonly known as “emo.”
If you only recognize this description, however, as something you’ve seen slinking around the mall, or as the young Violet Parr in Pixar’s film, The Incredibles, you may not.
Either way, I want to tell you about “Jesus Christ.” The song, that is. Brand New wrote “Jesus Christ” in 2006 for their third album, The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me, and I really like it. I’ve included the lyrics below, but try not to look at them just yet. I want you to hear and feel the song first.
What do you think?
Brand New falls into several overlapping music categories, including alternative rock, indie rock and emo. Like many emo bands, Brand New is dark, and characterized by questions and bouts of screaming. It’s emotional (hence the term, “emo”) and it – and this song in particular – does something for its listeners.
Consider what fans say about “Jesus Christ”:
“Songs like this help people get through the hardest times.”
“Beautiful.”
“Heart-wrenching.”
“This song makes my cry.”
I might agree. “Jesus Christ” reads like the desperate psalms. Musically and lyrically, it portrays the song-writer’s pain. I’m lonely. I’m not sure. I’m hurting and hungry and can’t find food to satisfy my longing. It comes across like Psalm 42:1, where David isn’t praising God for having, as much as he is mourning to God for not having:
“As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.”
Christians have difficulty writing somber lyrics and stanzas without including at least a spark of hope. I think we do this either because we really do have a spark of hope, or because we don’t but can’t admit it publicly. In the latter case, inserting hope protects us by causing listeners to say, “Oh, for a minute there, I thought he had given up, but nope. He’s still hanging on. He’ll be okay.”
Not okay
Sometimes, however, we’re not okay. Sometimes, like the Sons of Korah in Psalm 88, we can’t finish on a high note:
“But I cry to you for help, O LORD; in the morning my prayer comes before you. Why, O LORD, do you reject me and hide your face from me? …[T]he darkness is my closest friend.”
It behooves us to pretend and to suppress ugly questions.* God can handle this sort of talk whether we’re 50 or five; whether we’re solid Christ followers having an unusually bad week, or Brand New’s lead singer, Jesse Lacey, wherever he is spiritually.
Read the lyrics below as a psalm, or play the song again (to the very end) and read along. Listen for Lacey’s poetic confessions and honest questions. Can you take your own fear and dark and wood and nails before Jesus Christ? Scream if you have to. Cry. Or just listen like a friend to Jesse and pray for him and all the rest of us who sleep inside of this machine.
“Jesus Christ”
Jesus Christ, that’s a pretty face
The kind you’d find on someone I could save
If they don’t put me away
Well, it’ll be a miracleDo you believe you’re missing out
That everything good is happening somewhere else?
But with nobody in your bed
The night’s hard to get throughAnd I will die all alone
And when I arrive I won’t know anyoneWell Jesus Christ, I’m alone again
So what did you do those three days you were dead?
Cause this problem’s gonna last more than the weekend.Well Jesus Christ, I’m not scared to die,
I’m a little bit scared of what comes after
Do I get the gold chariot?
Do I float through the ceiling?Do I divide and fall apart?
Cause my bright is too slight to hold back all my dark
And the ship went down in sight of land
And at the gates does Thomas ask to see my handsI know you’ll come in the night like a thief
But I’ve had some time alone to hone my lying technique
I know you think that I’m someone you can trust
But I’m scared I’ll get scared and I swear I’ll try to nail you back upSo do you think that we could work out a sign
So I’ll know it’s you and that it’s over so I won’t even tryI know you’ll come for the people like me
But we all got wood and nails
We turn, turn out hate in factories**Yeah we all got wood and nails
We turn, turn out hate in factories
Yeah, we all got wood and nails
And we sleep inside of this machine
*For an interesting reflection on what happens when our questions become lord, read this article at Christ and Pop Culture.
**Perhaps “hating factories.” There is a good deal of debate over the exact wording of this song, but this version is as accurate as it gets without actually asking the band.
Post written by Sam Van Eman of New Breed of Advertisers. Photo by nAncY. Used with permission.
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Tune in next Friday for L.L. Barkat’s Random Acts of Poetry. Here’s her Poetry Prompt:
Over at @tspoetry, we’ve been having a few parties, where we gather together for one hour to write on-the-spot poetry. This week we tackled the party mission Love in Character, and we wrote poems from the viewpoint of famous couples like Cyrano & Roxane, Cleopatra & Mark Antony, and so on. (For the full low-down, read Love at the Masquerade Ball.)
Would you like to try writing a love poem in character? Post your offering by 6:00 p.m. Thursday November 5, for links and possible feature here. Drop your post link in my comment box so I don’t miss it. Don’t be shy!
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I think, Sam, that it’s okay to acknowledge fear and despair. That’s what this song sounds like to me — a heart cry of despair, a sense of failure, a knowledge that we’ve fallen far short. We’ve all been in that place.
And yet, and yet, there are these lines: “So what did you do those three days you were dead? Cause this problem’s gonna last more than the weekend.” I read identification with Jesus there — and hope.
I think my teen would like this song. Personally, I get down a little more with the Sons of Korah and good ole’ King David, but for the same “emo” reasons.
And for my money, I think it’s “hate factories.” That sounds like a pretty accurate critique of the church.
Glynn, what do you think about the very last strum before silence and then the continuation of the song? Is this related to hope; to the idea of putting one foot in front of the other like Katherine alludes to in Enough?
Megan, interesting comment. Do you mean the church as it’s often accused of being judgmental?
New to this site. Really like the song. I do think the continuation at the end as well as the overall tone isn’t total despair. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Sam — read the Enough post — that’s exactly like that pause in Brand New’s song — which threw me at first (I went back and listened to it a second time).
It’s funny, but I’m old enough to gripe about all this weird music these youngsters come up with these days but I marked this one as a favorite on YouTube. Even with the scream. What this song says and how it says it mirrors so much of my own experiences, and my own self. Thanks again for this post. This is why I keep coming back to HighCallingBlogs every day.
I may be waaaay off base but here’s what I thought when I listed to those words, “we all got wood and nails” and we “turn out hate factories.”
I think the “hate factories” are people. We’ve got these wood and nails that we use to do a couple different things: build ourselves up into these self-centered factories of flesh, all the while nailing Christ to a cross every day. We get so busy making something of ourselves, I think, that we end up trampling everyone else. Jesus, among the trampled …
You’re welcome, Glynn. Glad you’re here!
Jennifer, good stuff. Whether he says “hate factories” or “hating factories,” it could mean the same thing, and your reflection certainly has merit. The idea of “turn, turn” also gives that mechanical, never-ending, factory-like production feel. We trample over and over and over…
feeling alone and lonely
needing connection
love
tempted to get it for himself in the world
fighting with his doubts and desires
saying that none of us are perfect
asking what is going to happen to him
to all of us
he sees how impossible it seems
with how humanity is on earth
the ways of the world
produces hate instead of love
we are
battling with doubt
wanting faith
and love
and rest
it is good to acknoledge this about ourselves as we actually try to live out what we believe.
it is like the issues we face in the first part of handing something over to Jesus, before we ask for His help and to take it from us.
it is the ache and doubt and question part that we continue to battle with in this world the way it is and in our human body. the changes in our heart do not come easy to us.
p.s.
thanks for sharing…
and i actually liked the tune pretty much.
You’re right, nAncY, they don’t come easy.
I like Jennifer’s comment bettter than mine.
This song just gripped me. I teach the middle schoolers at my church on Wed. night and we are having a bit of a music war. We have a couple kids who tell us that Christian music is lame, they don’t believe the Bible is true, and God isn’t who we say He is.
But they keep coming back.
These kids also listen to some pretty R-rated secular music. When I told them that the guys in the Fray are Christians they said, “They don’t sound like it.” I almost laughed out loud. Maybe I did.
I’ll have to play this song for my kids. I think they might get it.
Amy, glad you found your way here. Come back anytime!
Megan, I liked your comment and Jennifer’s for different reasons. Not sure what you meant by “accurate critique of the church,” but it made me think of the book, unChristian, by David Kinnaman. Familiar with it?
Laura, a music war! Sounds like the perfect scenario for a discussion or series of discussions on cultural discernment. Where do you think such a series could go?
I am beginning to think that anything human-created is a form of prayer, no matter how far it is from what we might recognize as prayer. To this, I remember my father’s first “prayer” after he’d left my mom. A diehard atheist, driving down a dusty country road, he screamed at the nothingness, taking God’s name “in vain.” The ache of that prayer, conceived in apparent unbelief, eventually brought him to the arms of God.
Whether articulate and reverential pronouncements, or mere groanings, they are our prayers. Thanks for the good story, L.L.
To which I add, that discernment can be judgemental, and that the so called secular is where I find truth.
I am emo,rock, alternative, etc .inclined musically, have never doubted my belief, but have always questioned my motives.
Laura, Sam and deb,
Isn’t the point of discernment to judge? Be it cultural relevance, Biblical standard, or as simple as whether or not this music is some you would/could recommend? Not being judgemental in terms of passing ultimate judgement on another person but being aware of the content and context of our lives so as to live what we say we believe. Understanding that as long as the church on earth is made up of those of us with feet of clay we will be bound to tread more heavily than we should. And thereby living as those who are indeed under grace.
Deb, I’m always questioning my motives. It’s a good thing I get a kick out of it, or else the practive would overwhelm me.
Amy, I see the distinction between judging (as “discernment” – e.g. “The Sons of Isaachar knew the times and knew what they should do.”) and being judgmental. Perhaps it’s a matter of semantics, but your good reminder about humility and living under grace says that they are, indeed, different.
Sounds like Laura’s students could use a little more of the former and a little less of the latter. (Maybe I should attend, too!)