When My Time Comes

[Note:  In retrospect, this post turned a radically different direction than what I originally set out to do, so if you've already taken the step to click this link and see that it's long, I encourage you to give it a chance and offer your thoughts about it if you so choose...]

This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend the Gentlemen of the Road Bristol TN/VA Stopover headlined by Mumford & Sons with a number of other bands.  It was a fantastic spirit-lifting experience getting to indulge in such incredible musical talent twenty minutes away from my hometown of Kingsport, TN.  My favorite band by far outside of Mumford & Sons was Dawes.  As you probably know, I'm very much a music snob in sooo so many ways (go ahead and commence judgment) and I can't believe it has taken me so long to jump on the Dawes bandwagon.  But during this concert a song, When My Time Comes, caught my attention and after a lot of thought knocked me over both intellectually and spiritually.  Before you go on, I encourage you to listen to the song here and follow along with lyrics below:

There were moments of dreams 

I was offered to save

I live less like a workhouse,

more like a slave

I thought that one quick moment 

that was noble or brave

Would be worth the most of my life

So I pointed my fingers

and shout a few quotes I knew

As if something that's written 

should be taken as true

But every path I had taken 

and conclusion I drew

Would put truth back under the knife

And now the only piece of advice that continues to help

Is anyone that's making anything new only breaks something else

When my time comes

Ohhhhhh ohhh oh oh

When my time comes

Ohhhhhh ohhh oh oh

So I took what I wanted 

and put it out of my reach

I wanted to pay for my successes

with all my defeats

And if heaven was all

that was promised to me

Why don't I pray for death?

Well now it seems like the unraveling 

has started too soon

Now I'm sleeping in hallways 

and I'm drinking perfume

And I'm speaking to mirrors 

and I'm howling at moons

While the worse and the worse that it gets

Oh you can judge the whole world on the sparkle that you think it lacks

Yes, you can stare into the abyss, but it's starin' right back

When my time comes

Ohhhhhh ohhh oh oh

When my time comes

Ohhhhhh ohhh oh oh

Well you can judge the whole world on the sparkle that you think it lacks

Yes, you can stare into the abyss, but it's starin' right back

When my time comes

Ohhhhhh ohhh oh oh

When my time comes

Ohhhhhh ohhh oh oh

When my time comes

Ohhhhhh ohhh oh oh

A casual listen of the melody and catchy, harmonious chorus suggests this to be at least a somewhat positive, if not downright happy song.  Despite the happiness exuded in the melody, the thoughts portrayed in the words are rather disconcerting--yet expresses how I (and I'm guessing many of you reading this) have felt growing up in a world dominated by the assumed certainty of objective efforts to explain reality.  It speaks to those of us living in a modernist society slowly shifting to a postmodern worldview as we grow up and begin to discern the reality of the world--but more about that later.

Right from the beginning, the narrator imagines a future event, a quick moment, that will bring meaning and fulfillment to his life (I thought that one quick moment / that was noble or brave / Would be worth the most of my life).  Yet he quickly realizes (or perhaps realizes as the result of many long failures) that this future moment is enslaving his mind, his body, his soul.

To cope with his enslavement, he turns to the common mechanism of modern Enlightenment thought--knowledge.  But his knowledge is lacking, insufficient (So I pointed my fingers / and shouted a few quotes I knew). He concludes that truth (as if something that's written) isn't something that can be proven (should be taken as true).   Every path towards understanding, every conclusion and truth drawn is eventually tested and ultimately knocked down (But every path I had taken / and conclusion I drew / would be put back under the knife).

However, through all the testing of his faith about some future moment of greatness--a test that constantly destroys everything he thinks he understands--securing his current enslavement, he concludes that there is one piece of advice given to him that he understands: anything that he "discovers" as a new thought, a new philosophy, a new understanding, a new truth, is really just a replacement for an old thought, philosophy, understanding, truth (anyone that's making anything new only breaks something else).  He chooses to look at this particular advice with hopelessness and despair.  He proclaims When my time comes / Ohhhh ohh oh oh.  The long ohhhhhs seem to express some deeper despair about how his new/replacement understanding is inadequate in his view of reality--he hasn't even come close to figuring out what that understanding is or if it even exists. When his time comes...oh well...it doesn't seem like that time of future meaning and fulfillment is ever actually going to come, and if it does come, he might not be ready for it or even care about it anymore.

The last half of the song deals with his thought process and response to this deep despair.  That future moment off in the distance that he can see and almost taste is just out of his reach, and it seems like he wants to push it further away so as not to entice him any further (So I took what I wanted / and put it out of my reach).  He identifies with his suffering and seems to embrace it, or perhaps just wallow in it,  or perhaps longing to reach some kind of happiness and contentment with it (I wanted to pay for my successes with all my defeats).

But here he cries out and begs for an answer to perhaps the most significant question he's contemplated in all his pursuits of knowledge and truth, happiness and contentment, and some future great moment giving his life meaning.  If heaven was all that was promised to me / Why don't I pray for death?  If heaven is that future moment giving his life meaning and fulfillment, why doesn't he give up and welcome death?  Why continue to live within the confines of a life defined by despair and suffering and hopelessness if heaven is that great moment giving his pathetic life meaning?

That monumental and perhaps unanswerable question begins to take hold in his life and manifests itself very quickly, fueled by his despair (Now it seems like the unraveling started too soon).  Now his life is spent sleeping in hallways, chasing some shallow fading beauty (and I'm drinking perfume) and leaving him utterly alone with only himself to talk to (and I'm speaking to mirrors).  He is reduced to the lone wolf crying in the night (and I'm howling at moons) while his life spirals out of control (while the worse and the worse that it gets).

In this deep and dark pit of despair lies a broken and lonely man.  What does he have left?  Contempt and judgment for the world (oh you can judge the whole world on the sparkle that you think it lacks).  His despair turns to frustration as he envisions some bright moment the world should offer but doesn't, some sparkle the future should offer to give meaning and fulfillment to his life but doesn't.  All that frustration and judgment with the world, with the abyss, only offers back a blank stare of apathy (Yes, you can stare into the abyss, but it's starin' right back).

His response to the abyss?

When my time comes

Ohhhh ohh oh oh

The narrator in this song so perfectly shows the movement from Modernist worldview to Postmodernist worldview.  What I mean (albeit, in my own simplified terms and understanding of the worldviews) is the shift from the Modernist Enlightenment worldview in which everything is understood from an intellectual (and thus scientific) viewpoint and can theoretically be empirically known and measured through logic and reason, to the Postmodern worldview stemming from a recognition that reality is not simply mirrored in human understanding of it, but rather, is constructed as the mind tries to understand its own particular and personal reality.  Postmodernism is characteristically highly suspicious (remember that great My Morning Jacket song?) of concrete truths about reality and instead focuses on the relative truths of each individual.  In other words, my interpretation of reality is going to be vastly different from yours, so it's impossible for us to agree on some truth unless we both possess it, and even then isn't universally true since someone else may not discern truth the same way you and I do.  Within the song, the positive, almost downright happy melody of the song even intensifies this viewpoint, providing a great irony--I can't know any truth really, so I live my life for some future moment that probably doesn't exist, and end up staring into the abyss--all the while exuding a sense of apathy about that reality expressed by some melodic and catchy facade.

I think many of us who truly take the time to discern our own particular worldview realize that it's possible, probable even, that we were spoon fed our particular worldview by our parents, our churches, our educators, our society (not maliciously, of course, but out of each's desire to raise us up in the way they saw fit), and that we follow this same shifting worldview path as we grow up (but perhaps not as extreme as the narrator), eventually leading us to look towards some future moment where meaning and fulfillment can be found making life worth all the suffering and pain.  Along that path, we ask the same questions the narrator does, searching for truth among the ideologies and religious notions we've been taught and despairing when that truth gets constantly challenged.  We then become so obsessed with that future moment that we fail to live in the present.  We focus on some unattainable future, a moment we've put out of reach, while our lives pass us by.

This song portrays one of two outcomes a person can reach through this journey.  All the questioning, the doubt, the suspicion that comes from searching for truth in our past understanding can ultimately, and quite easily I think, lead to great despair and hopelessness, a great stare-down with the abyss.

But that search for truth can also go in another radical direction.  When we find that our past understanding (the Modernist worldview) was insufficient in discerning reality, instead of longing for some great future moment that will give our own individual life meaning and fulfillment (the Postmodern worldview), we can choose instead to search for truth about our present reality, and find meaning and fulfillment in our lives now.

The narrator in this song comes to the conclusion that all we have to look forward to in this life is darkness and futility.  And quite honestly, he's right in many ways--and this conclusion isn't confined to 21st century thought.  Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes 1:2, "Perfectly pointless [...] perfectly pointless.  Everything is pointless."  The world is a vast, pointless abyss.  But why live your life for the promise of heaven?  Why not pray for death now if the world is pointless?

For many of us, our lives until now has been loosely centered on a faith in God, and a shaky one at that.  A faith that promised a future moment giving our life meaning and fulfillment.  And one thing I can say without a doubt, much like the narrator of this song, is that that kind of faith and understanding of reality only leads to despair and hopelessness.  Our faith was, as C.S. Lewis so perfectly describes it, built out of a house of cards, just waiting to be tipped over at the slightest movement (A Grief Observed, p. 38).  

Our house of cards faith in that future moment has been knocked down time and time again.  And we should thank God for that.  Lewis, writing about his grief following the death of his wife, wrote "I must surely admit [...] that, if my house was a house of cards, the sooner it was knocked down the better.  And only suffering could do it (p. 38).  God knows our faith, and he knows that our lives cannot be a constant longing for some future moment, a moment past death of our physical bodies, that enslaves us in deep despair.  So he allows our faith to be knocked down--perhaps He even knocks it down Himself. "God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality.  He knew it already.  It was I who didn't [...] His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down" (p. 52).

So even though this path--from spoon fed certainty about reality and some future great moment giving our lives meaning, to doubt and questioning the truth about reality--can so easily end up depositing us in a pit of despair staring into the abyss, it doesn't have to be that way.  God doesn't call us to blindly accept his words as concrete truth that can be easily known.  He encourages us to take that path from concrete certainty to uncertainty.  He encourages us to scrutinize our past understandings of truth and constantly admit that we may not and probably don't know everything there is to know about the truth of reality.  He encourages us to make ourselves vulnerable and acknowledge our weakness.  He encourages us to put away some grandiose idea of a great future moment defining our lives.  He encourages us to take that path with the utmost humility.

And why is that?  Because we can't know concrete certainty.  We can't see everything there is to be seen about the truth of reality.  The nature of God's power is made perfect through weakness. And that grandiose moment defining our lives?  It's already happened.  It happened when Jesus lived and walked the earth in the 1st century.  In a world littered with insufficient ideologies and religions, each claiming to know the truth about reality.  Amongst a people who were living their lives for some great future moment that would define themselves and give their lives meaning and fulfillment.  A people who longed to be made great by the establishment of the perfect physical kingdom, governed by the Messiah.

But it didn't happen the way they thought it would.  That grandiose moment happened in the utter humiliation and degradation on the most shameful symbol reserved for the worst criminals.  It happened in the extreme suffering, extreme physical pain, unbearable mental anguish of the Messiah, the God who is made perfect in weakness.

It's a sobering thought.

When my time comes....

Well...

...my time has already come.  That great defining moment has passed, and is begging for us to discover it.  Not to view it with apathy or resentment, but with grace and humility.  It can't be discovered through judgment of the world, staring into that abyss, on that sparkle that you think it lacks.

It all comes down to this:  Don't spend your life living for some future moment that will define your life and give it meaning and fulfillment, because it doesn't exist.  Spend your life living for that moment that's already passed--that humiliating moment that brought that future promise of heaven, the promise that caused us to ask why we shouldn't just pray for death, that moment that brought the kingdom of God into the abyss, offering forgiveness and healing of its brokenness, offering mercy to the unloved, the poor, the marginalized, the depressed, the doubter, and the hopeless--and allow it to give you meaning and fulfillment, serving the world instead of staring it down. 

Ohhhhh ohh oh oh.......

"God's riches, wisdom, and knowledge are so deep!  They are as mysterious as his judgments, and they are as hard to track as his paths! Who has known the Lord's mind? Or who has been his mentor? Or who has given him a gift and has been paid back by him?  All things are from him and through him and for him.  May the glory be to him forever.  Amen."     
Romans 11:33-36 (CEB)