Hit Youtube for music today, and got some songs I don’t normally get in my music mix. I enjoyed them immensely, yet that niggling auditor in the back of my brain couldn’t help but question the lyrics — or associated images — for truth. Do they really conform to the Reality of the God who is both the Divine Object and the Divine Subject, a pertinent question for the Handbook of Libertarian Theology.
The song Overcomer by Mandisa moved me to tears as it touched and inspired me, as did the other two songs I am going to comment on. But the auditor noted that the images shown all seemed to be medical struggle, and the push was to not give up in life-threatening medical situations. Yet that was not the type of situation that John the Revelator was addressing in his letters to the churches when he said “To him who overcomes …”
I haven’t been silent or shy about sharing the fact that Jasini and I have been struggling, really struggling, the past 5 months (actually we’ve been struggling, just not really struggling, the past 5 years), and the song was another word of hope to me. Yet, as Jasini says, “We will survive, we will thrive. But we don’t really know that is true. God hasn’t promised us that. Others much more righteous than us have not been rescued by God.” (Insert thought here to the words of Hannaniah, Azariah and Mishael — you know them better as Shardrack, Meshack, and Abednigo – their Babylonian names. When asked to bow down to the idol they told Nebuchadnezzer that while their God could deliver them, whether he did or he didn’t — and I place my bet on they expected the he wouldn’t — that they would not bow down.)
Being an overcomer isn’t about winning a battle with sickness, or recovering from an arson set fire when multiple attacks before that impoverished you to the level that you had no insurance — and thus no insurance money — to rebuild. It is summed up in 2 Timothy 4:7 “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith“.
Not that the other struggles shouldn’t be struggled and won. But winning isn’t always recovering – either from sickness or fire. Overcoming is keeping the faith. Now, to keep the faith we often, even usually, have to fight both the sickness and the fire, but recovery isn’t assured, isn’t a part of overcoming.
This second song by Mandisa didn’t evoke so much from the auditor. But the line “If we’re going to fight, let us fight for each other,” hit me deeply. Jasini and I are NOT the ones who have fought and rejected the other side. We have been “despised and rejected of men”, though definitely not at the level for which Christ suffered and died.
The thing my auditor insists to add here is that sometimes we must fight someone, and that we need to remember that we fight with them, not against them. That I have not forgotten, and they have.
Give Me Your Eyes by Brandon Heath reaches perhaps the farthest, with no clue what he is really asking. Not that he is asking wrong, but can he, can any of us, really handle seeing what God sees? None of us have enough pity for His suffering, much less the sufferings of “humanity”.
And it is the word choice “humanity”, which so well fits the rhythm, but the baggage of the word strikes me wrong. He sings the line about caring for those beyond his reach, and it reminds me of a line, I think from C.S. Lewis (Jasini thinks Screwtape Letters, if I have the right author), that it is easy for men to love humanity, but hard to love their neighbor. So while he is singing about loving those distant from him, the images actually show him caring about those within his reach, his neighbor, and if we take the images, not the words, we will get closer. to the heart of the song, and thus the eyes of God that he wants to see through.
And there you have it — the nits low hanging enough for the libertarian theologian to pick at.
At The Rainbow 