Lately, Cerberus has primarily been a political blog, which is fine by me, but I want to mix things up a bit with this post. This post is also unusual in that it doesn't draw many conclusions. Instead, I would like to encourage discussion on this topic. I would like Cerberus to be more interactive in general, rather than just three of us posting our thoughts and occasionally commenting on each other's posts. Many thanks to all of our readers who have been commenting already. Keep it up.
To the topic at hand: The first song on Wilco's album Summerteeth, "Can't Stand It," contains the lines "No love's as random / As God's love / I can't stand it / I can't stand it." I do not know exactly what the song is about or what Jeff Tweedy is trying to say here, but I always hear these lines as a criticism of Reformed theology, particularly the idea of election. After all, God's choice of whom He saves does seem random from our perspective. We do not know why He chooses whom He does, other than that it has nothing to do with anything good in the person He chooses. In fact, this is one of the most important features of the gospel, that there is absolutely nothing you are, have done, or will do that can make God love you any more than He decided to before He created the world.
I know the theological answers to this sort of objection: God's choice is based on His sovereign will and is perfect. God is the Potter; we are the clay; we have no right to challenge why He makes some vessels for one purpose and some for another.
These responses probably would not do much to satisfy someone who raised this objection, though. The objection as I hear it is based on an emotional response ("I can't stand it"). The logic of the above answers will not take away this emotional response.
Now for my lack of a conclusion: Is this what Tweedy is talking about? What is the rest of the song about? To what degree is this objection valid? What would you say to someone that raised this objection? Is there a better response that does deal with the emotional response? Is the only solution to let the Holy Spirit work to remove this emotional response? Does this objection bother you at all?
Monday, July 30, 2007
Stephen
No Love's as Random as God's Love
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6 comments:
I haven't paid attention to the song very much. Usually what I think is, "Oooh, 'A Shot in the Arm' comes up in a few minutes."
After reading the lyrics, it's clear that Tweedy is opposed to religion. Based on the second verse, that the "phones still ring," I think Tweedy is particularly critiquing the Joel Osteen types who make money off certain groups of believers. I'm not sure that he's critiquing Reformed theology; I think he's complaining about a more general idea that God loves some people more than others.
If Tweeds is railing against mainstream Christianity, whether his information on the subject comes from reading or from personal experiences, we can assume he doesn't have a critical theological approach to these sorts of things, and of course it is important that Christians themselves always continue asking spiritual questions of themselves, including how they live out their theology.
Christians of all shades can err by forcing God into manmade categories. When Moses asked how he should describe God to the captive Israelites, God responded that "I AM who I AM." Moses got something he didn't really expect, and had to engage God on His own terms.
I think the same goes for love. It won't do for Christians to remain content with human ideas and expressions of love as the essence of love, for the essence of love is God.
So Tweedy, like so many others, analyze God's character and actions from the same shaky ground. Tweedy comes to the discussion with an idea of what love is, but he has no rational basis for what love might actually be. It might be chemicals sounding off in the brain when a pretty girl walks by, or the natural product of millions of years of human and social evolution. At any rate, it is not God's love that is random or arbitrary; any kind of love is quite accidental.
As far as the thrust of Tweedy's statement you mentioned, arbitrary though it may be, still serves as a forceful critique of Christianity. But rather than thinking of God's love towards humans as arbitrary, I prefer to think of it as miraculous. Humans do not deserve a shred of divine love; we only deserve divine and justified wrath.
I don't think my answer is particularly sufficient, but I do think it is important to realize some of the mysteries associated with the divine love. But I'd rather have a mystery than an absurdity.
Perhaps we can learn something from the universalists when this question comes around: is God's love really all about an individualistic thing that happens to us one by one, or is there perhaps a more universal scope of election and its purpose?
That's one thing I've wondered about, Ben. The idea of cosmos in John 3:16 seems applicable.
I think the artist is trying to say that God's love is random, not in respect to whom he chooses, but why he chooses them.
It is most utterly random that God takes pity on any sinner as he does.
I don't know that it's a rant against religion, though Tweedy is certainly anti-christian. I've always thought that Summerteeth as an album could be summarized by "16 ways drugs have ruined my life, and especially my relationships." Its a very personal album. The problems faced are internal, not external.
In this light, I see "Can't stand it" as talking about his wife leaving him, and the associated feelings. He's drawing a parallel to feeling abandoned by God. The analogy is illustrated with lines like "You know it's all beginning/to feel like it's ending." Or even, "Funny how we make new friends/Oh hey ho/I gotta go/My prayers will never be answered again", which, seen together with "How to fight loneliness", is a pretty apt description of the hopeless feeling drawn from lost love.
The key here is the final verse. "No love's as random as my love." I don't see how that makes sense with a critique of reformed theology. He's identifying his own love as the thing he can't stand, comparing it to the love of God: self-existent, irrespective of the qualities of the object.
It seemed to me to be critical of religion as well. From the atheist's perspective, the idea of God being a loving god makes no sense because of the arbitrariness of it. You said yourself that "it has nothing to do with anything good in the person He [sic] chooses." Arbitrary love is inherently less loving than the kind of love we generally "can stand." Atheists don't quite get how anyone (not just Tweedy) could stand that kind of love.
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