You carried me is a song from the band Building 429. The song is a single off their 2007 release Iris to Iris and is currently topping the contemporary Christian music charts. Building 429, for those who don’t know, are a Christian rock band from North Carolina. They won the Gospel Music Association 2005 “New Artist of the Year” award and have been rising since. Their name points to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians 4:29 “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” You can take a listen to the song here, and read the lyrics, followed by some comments about why songs like this, written from “a strictly vertical perspective,” can’t bear enough weight to carry the message I’m trying to develop in this blog (and in the book to follow, I hope).
And fans of Building 429, I do like the song! Its not that–more below . . .
I’ve been so busy, I missed the reasons
I missed Your love, I nearly missed it all
Still You’ve loved me, and You’ve healed me
You’ve given all and it brought me to Your cross
And I stand only because You’ve given me grace to walk
Only because
You carried me
You carried me
You carried me through it all
And I believe
Yes I believe
You’ll carry me all the way home
‘Cause mercy covers all
I know the scripture, I’ve known the songs
I sang the words from my hollowed heart
You’ve spoken softly through the storm
I’ve heard Your voice and I’ve felt the calm
I stand only because You’ve given me faith to walk
Only because
You carried me
You carried me
You carried me through it all
And I believe
Yes I believe
You’ll carry me all the way home
I know that you love me
I’ll never doubt it, I can’t live without it
Your mercy has found me
I am astounded, I can’t live without it oooh
You carried me, You carried me
Through it all…
You carried me
You carried me
And I believe
Yeah I believe
You’ll carry me all the way home
Cause mercy covers all
Mercy covers all
Yeah, yeah
And I believe
And I believe
I believe
Jason Roy, one of the band’s founders and the lyric and music writer for “You Carried Me,” describes this new album as a result of a divine intervention. He had been trying to write new lyrics and struggling. He says he “hit his knees” and God spoke to him saying, “Sing to Me.” They describe this album, then, and this song as case in point, as coming from “a strictly vertical perspective.”
So my thoughts on why I can only go so far with this kind of song:
First, it is a “Christian” song. I say this not because it has references to mercy or grace or whatever. So does Cohen’s Hallelujah, obviously. It’s not that. Rather it is a song about faith, mercy, and the power of God, a praise song of an almost unambiguous sort. I’m okay with that for church–for the gathering of insiders. I’m even okay with that in popular culture, but theologically I worry about songs like this–for Sunday worship, where they have a proper place, but especially in pop culture more broadly.
Why do I worry about such songs? Second, then, I think they are a bit formulaic and not that deep biblically. The song feels a bit like the famous “footprints in the sand” poem. The lyric admits “storms” in life, but the total confidence that God carries us through (“Ill never doubt it, I can’t live without it.”) ends up feeling like in order to offer praise, we’re trying to say the right “faithful” things to God.
Third, such songs lack biblical depth because even when they speak of storms, they only highlight the “silver lining.” As fan testimonies roll at the end of the video for “You Carried Me,” diverse people declare God carried them through alcoholism and anger, divorce and loneliness. Do I doubt this? Of course not. The danger here is that the form of presentation teaches the faithful, and more importantly witness to the culture, that in order to be “in” with God, you have to have utter confidence (“I’ll never doubt”) that God has carried you, too. Such praise sounds dressed up for Sunday; it sounds like a “holy” hallelujah when set side by side with Cohen’s cold and broken hallelujah. Douglas John Hall, whose work on the theology of the cross taught me a lot, once said that we ought to be very wary of prescriptive providence. In other words, don’t be too quick to say to Joseph while he is in prison in Egypt, “They meant it for evil, but God means it for good.” Hey all you people who have crap going on in your lives: don’t worry! God is carrying you! It may be true in a technical sense, but think about how it is heard.
To many Christians this point of view will be unsettling or even incomprehensible. Fine. Jesus continuously unsettled the righteous insiders of his day, and he comes in his living word today to do the same.
Next up: I’ll do a bit of theological straight talk to clarify where I’m coming from juxtaposing holy and broken hallelujahs.
+anon.
One Comment
Chris, as I just came back to this after quite some time, I think I am not entireyl convinced. On the one hand, there is definitely truth to the understanding of “admitting storm, yet total confidence in God’s love” is probably rather shallow – on the one level. On the other hand, however, the “vertical perspective” resolves that a little bit. It means that “I believe ? You carried me” means something completely different for you than it does for me. Then, the expression could be understood as an encouragement to “walk on”, being perfectly aware of the broken character of our faith. I have written on my blog on the issue that the songs that are not turning a blind eye on the “brokenness” of our lives are those that are more powerful. I am not talking about the “Jesus loves, yeah, Jesus loves” songs, but think of it in the sense of e.g. Hillsong’s “Evermore” (“as i look upon your name, circumstances fade away (…) Evermore, my heart will say, above all, I live for Your glory (…) Even if my world falls, I will say, above all, I live for Your glory”), or even more so, think of David Crowder’s “Remedy”. They are challenging in the sense – “can I really say that?” And the challenge and encouragement is to change your perspective to the vertical. “You have to have utter confidence” – I do not think that this song is necessarily teaching that. Oh yes, my faith is still broken, lacks confidence on all ends, BUT STILL – I praise God, and that’s what keeps me going, and because of that, I am not paralyzed. The question can then be, how do we encourage each other to hold on to the faith (after all, a broken faith is better than having completely lost your faith…). There is also the awareness against which it has to be considered that your faith is not your own (maybe a rather uncommon reading of 1 Corinthians 6:19). Or think of the fascinating tension that is established in Hillsong United’s “Desperate People” between the “We chase Your heart” and “Show us the way to Your heart” – again, a n example of the vertica dimension. It also raises the way bigger question whether the church encourages a “true-faced” Christianity anyway – is the church a place that allows space for people to be honest about their pain? But that would lead to a different area…