Comentarios
10 years ago
I get the Trans-Siberian Express reference, some of the keyboards I found to be cheesy as well. But I found the guitar parts to be good, and the vocals are fine, too. I love this guy's voice. But I can't help finding it unfortunate that he changed the lyrics to make them more overtly Christian. I have wondered for a long time what it was about Christians, or Christianity, or the themes and lifeways thereof that made Christian "rock" so lame, so cheesy, so tiresome. Ironically, the so-called spiritual dimension in this case saps the music of SOUL. It seems to me that it was inevitable that Christianizing this song would not do it any favors. And it's unfortunate that all Christians can't celebrate all of life, as Livgren once celebrated Alfred Einstein, a Jew and a physicist, a great mind. Einstein was (and is) an expression of The Christ that lives and moves in all things and beings even if he did not wear the Christian label....I really think that's part of it, is that Christians believe that all things have to be expressed in dogmatically Christian terms, when Jesus Christ made every effort to give GOD the credit--"The Father abiding in me doeth the work" (my personal belief is that the imperial force of Rome put a different sort of lyric in Jesus' mouth, such as "I (personally) am the truth, and the way, and the life."). They do not see that every celebration is a celebration of the Christ Spirit that has no borders or bounds or labels. So celebrating the Jew, Einstein, and his talents and vision, without ever overtly mention Jesus, IS celebrating Christ (I say this with every irony, knowing that Jesus was a Jew). Therefore their lyrics, in repeating endlessly that Christian "labeling", become rather tiresome. Perhaps this lyrical restrictedness spills over into the music ...If you think about it, this was not always the case. Christmas carols, for instance, are of course Christian-themed, but generally are lovely, fun, and extremely varied in their harmonies, melodies, and lyrics. Perhaps they dig a little deeper into the legendarium of the Christian (and pre-Christian) world, as well as the natural world, giving a deeper musical and lyrical extension to the work. Perhaps these days there is simply less evident expression of the staggering complexity, variety and unity of Life (and therefore the Creator behind it), seeing as how the fullest expression of this--Nature--is disappearing in favor of increasingly banal expressions of humankind's technology and infrastructure (one has to note that some of this destruction of Nature is occurring in the name of Jesus Christ when the 'evidence' of His favor is taken to be the exceedingly destructive 'prosperity'--meausured in dollars--of western civilization. Nominal Christians can in this way use spiritual experience, and perhaps their bank accounts, as a means of denying the ecocidal, suicidal ways and means we have of achieving our 'wealth'. When they do this, they ironically prove the atheist Marx right when he indulged in his own brand of labeling, calling all religion "the opiate of the people".)...Yes, the more I think about it, the clearer it seems to me: if Christians would stop neglecting The Mother, and embrace Her ("Honor thy father AND they mother,", the Commandment says), maybe their lives would have more meaning, and their songs more SOUL!