Is Your Faith an Adventure or a Quest? The Difference Between the Two

Our culture loves admiring (from a safe distance, mind you) the glory of quests. We love watching them in movies and reading about them in novels, but in actual practice, we much prefer adventures over quests. In fact, our Western culture, despite all the lip-service it pays to them, tends to avoid quests with the same fear that it avoids death.

Why?

While listening to a Timothy Keller sermon (from a podcast called “Real Security and the Call of God,” posted on iTunes 2/10/10) he explained something striking about adventures and quests.

An adventure, at least in the world of literary analysis, is a “there and back again” journey. You leave your home – your comfortable world, whatever/whomever/wherever that is – you go somewhere dangerous and adventurous, and then you return home and continue living your life just as you did before, but with the added benefit of having that adventure alive and shimmering in your memories. Bilbo Baggins went and faced the dragon, survived a great battle, then returned home and lived a happy life just as before but with new treasures added to his comfortable Hobbit hole. “There and back again.”

But with a quest you don’t return home.

You either die in service to the quest or you return home so changed from the quest that you can never return to your old life or live it quite the same way. A part of you has died in service to the quest, even if your body has survived, and you come back unrecognizable to yourself – maybe even to others.

In the Gospels, when Jesus said to “take up your cross and follow Me,” He was making it clear what kind of faith He meant. He was announcing a quest. But we reject Jesus’ call and re-shape Christianity into an adventure. We like the excitement of following Jesus, but we want a “there and back again” experience. We want to return to our earth-centered delights and comforts undisturbed when the Sunday service has ended or when our monthly outreach event comes to a close or when we exit the prayer closet.

Of course, we do return to our hobbit holes of comfort with a little fire in our hearts flickering from the recent spiritual experience, but we only tolerate the little flame as long as it serves to enhance, not threaten, our stable routine of comforts. If that flame begins to grow too large, and if it threatens to consume us and our comforts, we snuff it out. We remind that little flame, “Excuse me, little flame, but, if you recall, it is there and back again. You must always allow me to return home to my world of comforts undisturbed when I am finished with our adventures.” In the grand scheme of things, we may love our faith, our church life and the spiritual happiness it all brings, and we may love the upper case Cross – the one that Jesus died on for us out of His fierce love – but we want nothing to do with the lower case cross, the one that Jesus requires His followers to “take up.” We do not want death or irrevocable transformation.

We want Adventure Christianity. We do not want Quest Christianity.

Frodo went on a quest. His journey to Mt. Doom brought severe wounds to him – so severe that he could not return home. Instead, after the quest was complete, he set sail from the Grey Havens and went far from Middle-Earth into the Undying Lands far over the ocean in the West with the elves. It was his only chance to find healing, both for his body and his spirit. He lost everything because of the quest. Yet Sam begged him to not go with the elves. Sam just wanted to go back home to the comforts and simple happiness of the Shire and eat dinners with his best friend Frodo at the pub again and laugh and enjoy life as they had always done. But Frodo said this to Sam in reply:

“But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.”

It is a broken moment. It hurts to read it. The world is saved, yes, but, somehow, all is still lost.

But then the far-off longing comes, that stab-of-joy desire that C.S. Lewis wrote about in "Surprised By Joy” – some strange desire for a home we’ve never seen wells up – and we hear a voice of hope in the blackness. This voice says something that reminds me of this line from “Return of the King”:

“For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”

…light and high beauty forever beyond the the reach of the Shadow.

And even for those who are allowed to return home after the quest, they can never be the same again. They lose a part of themselves. Yet, even in such deep, heart-rending transformation, an Unseen Hand pulls treasures from the dark – treasures that we could have never imagined.

Again I turn to "The Lord of the Rings.” After the war ends, the king, named Aragorn, comes to the houses of healing to visit the wounded. There he finds the hobbit named Merry. Merry has been grievously injured both in body and spirit, and he is unconscious, but he will survive. The king says this about Merry’s suffering:

“His grief he will not forget; but it will not darken his heart, it will teach him wisdom.”

Timothy Keller points out in his sermon called “The Two Great Tests” that nothing tests our faith and refines our spiritual wisdom more than two things: great suffering and great success. Both whip around us as white hot fires, and their flames have consumed far too many to number.

But, whatever tests and fires may come, if we can accept that we are on a quest and not an adventure, and if we stay close to our True Companion on this quest, our grief will not darken our hearts.

It will teach us wisdom.

FREE ebook of Kevin’s short story “The Night Elvis Presley Met C.S. Lewis – A (Possibly) True Story” when you sign up for Kevin’s email list.

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The Future Needs a Big Kiss

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A Song in the Night Seasons (Psalm 77)

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Jesus' Lesser Known Miracle for Guitarists

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How WAKE UP DEAD MAN Helped a Troubled Youth (Part 1)

The secrets of our deepest longings – those stabs of joy, bittersweet pangs of homesickness for a home we’ve never had, are locked in ordinary moments. But they are also locked in moments of suffering. Moments of disaster. Moments of mournful longing.

Here’s a story about this very truth – the story of a troubled youth who finds a spark, like electric arrows from Heaven pointing to God, in the least likely place: a rock album called “Pop” by a certain Irish band.

This troubled youth once became a high school drop out for a day when he walked out of class in a panic without saying a word to anyone and walked right off campus (which was not allowed, of course). He then experienced (what he later learned) was a symptom of Post Traumatic Stress Symptom (something that doctors would diagnose in him a few months later). After he ditched his classes and ran away from his high school he wandered aimless and alone. The terrors and sorrows of certain troubles in his life had stalked him day and night, and finally they found him and sank their sharpest fangs in. That day the youth ended up in an ambulance when something akin to a panic attack paralyzed him (and he thought perhaps it was a heart attack).

As he lay in the ambulance, out the back window he could see stacks of white clouds billowing and drifting like air ships. A sting hit his heart, and he thought of his parents, and he grieved about what the ambulance ride would cost them. He wondered what would happen to him. Was he going to die? He seemed to be feeling better even as the ambulance reached the hospital.

They released him the same day. No one understood what was wrong. It wouldn’t be for another few months until a doctor zeroed in on what was happening. (PTSD.) 

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is something usually associated with combat veterans, but it is more common than people realize in other situations that aren’t necessarily on the battlefield.

So it was not a physical battlefield. But it was an unseen one – a spiritual battlefield. 

He was promptly removed from school that year, his junior year, and he spent the year in home study – i.e. where a student completes all of their school work at home. No attending classes. No school trips.  Very little contact with peers. Often alone.

Yet not alone.

“Draw near to God and He will draw near to you." 

In that solitude the love of God came like a warm memory, and, with the lion-like fierceness of Aslan, that Voice of love made a promise to the youth: "I will make these nightmarish stories unravel and turn back until they are untrue, and I will turn back the poison and siphon the night from your lungs so you can breathe again. Just wait patiently. Wait for me.”

And in that dim light of waiting, music came, and it was an Irish tenor singing, “Wake up dead man." 

In Part 2 I will tell you what happened to the troubled youth when the story came to an end. 

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How WAKE UP DEAD MAN Helped a Troubled Youth (Part 1)

The secrets of our deepest longings – those stabs of joy, bittersweet pangs of homesickness for a home we’ve never had, are locked in ordinary moments. But they are also locked in moments of suffering. Moments of disaster. Moments of mournful longing.

Here’s a story about this very truth – the story of a troubled youth who finds a spark, like electric arrows from Heaven pointing to God, in the least likely place: a rock album called “Pop” by a certain Irish band.

This troubled youth once became a high school drop out for a day when he walked out of class in a panic without saying a word to anyone and walked right off campus (which was not allowed, of course). He then experienced (what he later learned) was a symptom of Post Traumatic Stress Symptom (something that doctors would diagnose in him a few months later). After he ditched his classes and ran away from his high school he wandered aimless and alone. The terrors and sorrows of certain troubles in his life had stalked him day and night, and finally they found him and sank their sharpest fangs in. That day the youth ended up in an ambulance when something akin to a panic attack paralyzed him (and he thought perhaps it was a heart attack).

As he lay in the ambulance, out the back window he could see stacks of white clouds billowing and drifting like air ships. A sting hit his heart, and he thought of his parents, and he grieved about what the ambulance ride would cost them. He wondered what would happen to him. Was he going to die? He seemed to be feeling better even as the ambulance reached the hospital.

They released him the same day. No one understood what was wrong. It wouldn’t be for another few months until a doctor zeroed in on what was happening. (PTSD.) 

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is something usually associated with combat veterans, but it is more common than people realize in other situations that aren’t necessarily on the battlefield.

So it was not a physical battlefield. But it was an unseen one – a spiritual battlefield. 

He was promptly removed from school that year, his junior year, and he spent the year in home study – i.e. where a student completes all of their school work at home. No attending classes. No school trips.  Very little contact with peers. Often alone.

Yet not alone.

“Draw near to God and He will draw near to you." 

In that solitude the love of God came like a warm memory, and, with the lion-like fierceness of Aslan, that Voice of love made a promise to the youth: "I will make these nightmarish stories unravel and turn back until they are untrue, and I will turn back the poison and siphon the night from your lungs so you can breathe again. Just wait patiently. Wait for me.”

And in that dim light of waiting, music came, and it was an Irish tenor singing, “Wake up dead man." 

In Part 2 I will tell you what happened to the troubled youth when the story came to an end. 

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Writing a Nonfiction Book Proposal? I’ve Got the Perfect Template for You

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Do You See the Bride of Christ as Ugly? (What to Do When the Church's Beauty is Stolen From Us)

Perhaps one of the greatest problems in the Church is that we can’t get along with each other. In many cases, Christians get so tired of all the flaws of other Christians and the church, whether their local church or the global church, that they refuse to go back into one. They cut themselves off from the One whom Christ calls His beloved. The demons in C.S. Lewis’s book “The Screwtape Letters” knew all about this tendency in our human nature.

And their observations are stunning.

In Chapter 2, the elder demon is angered to find that the human target of his clumsy nephew has become a Christian. Without hesitation, the elder demon moves quickly to advise the young demon on how to pull the man back into Satan’s household. How? By repulsing the man with the flaws of other Christians:

“One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread but through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new building estate. When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather an oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print.”

Lewis draws two pictures here:

1) the triumphant Church that Christ has labored to build day after day, year after year, for two thousands years since He rose from the dead

and 2) the unattractive, flawed, surface image of the Church, which finds its root in its most basic element: other human beings.

On the surface, the Church is full of unpolished, imperfect people who gather in imperfect church buildings and are not talented in running perfect services that perfectly edify everyone in the room in a perfect way.

Yet, this imperfect day-to-day, mundane, unattractive Church is the foundry where Christ does His most precious work. It is the quarry where He tirelessly mines and shapes His living stones for His Father’s temple.

That glorious triumphant Church does indeed exist in every individual Christian in a miniature form – like a miniaturized scale model of New York City in a snow globe.

But we have to look hard for it – in others, yes, but also in ourselves. We have to have eyes of the Holy Spirit, not eyes of the flesh. We have to see other people with heavenly thinking, not earthly thinking.

If we see as Jesus sees, we will see the breathtaking sparkle and awe-inspiring glory of His Bride twinkling in the eyes of every genuine Christian who carries the Spirit of Christ within his or her heart.

If we have this vision, stabs of joy will puncture our day-to-day lives on a more consistent basis – even when we’re knee-deep in sorrow and muck – because we will be seeing Heaven’s diamonds hidden and shimmering beneath all the grime of this world.

Lord, give us eyes to see that beauty in each other instead of eyes of criticism, disrespect, and consumer-minded thinking as if the Body of Christ were a consumer good that we could rate on Yelp.

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Do You See the Bride of Christ as Ugly? (What to Do When the Church's Beauty is Stolen From Us)

Perhaps one of the greatest problems in the Church is that we can’t get along with each other. In many cases, Christians get so tired of all the flaws of other Christians and the church, whether their local church or the global church, that they refuse to go back into one. They cut themselves off from the One whom Christ calls His beloved. The demons in C.S. Lewis’s book “The Screwtape Letters” knew all about this tendency in our human nature.

And their observations are stunning.

In Chapter 2, the elder demon is angered to find that the human target of his clumsy nephew has become a Christian. Without hesitation, the elder demon moves quickly to advise the young demon on how to pull the man back into Satan’s household. How? By repulsing the man with the flaws of other Christians:

“One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread but through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new building estate. When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather an oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print.”

Lewis draws two pictures here:

1) the triumphant Church that Christ has labored to build day after day, year after year, for two thousands years since He rose from the dead

and 2) the unattractive, flawed, surface image of the Church, which finds its root in its most basic element: other human beings.

On the surface, the Church is full of unpolished, imperfect people who gather in imperfect church buildings and are not talented in running perfect services that perfectly edify everyone in the room in a perfect way.

Yet, this imperfect day-to-day, mundane, unattractive Church is the foundry where Christ does His most precious work. It is the quarry where He tirelessly mines and shapes His living stones for His Father’s temple.

That glorious triumphant Church does indeed exist in every individual Christian in a miniature form – like a miniaturized scale model of New York City in a snow globe.

But we have to look hard for it – in others, yes, but also in ourselves. We have to have eyes of the Holy Spirit, not eyes of the flesh. We have to see other people with heavenly thinking, not earthly thinking.

If we see as Jesus sees, we will see the breathtaking sparkle and awe-inspiring glory of His Bride twinkling in the eyes of every genuine Christian who carries the Spirit of Christ within his or her heart.

If we have this vision, stabs of joy will puncture our day-to-day lives on a more consistent basis – even when we’re knee-deep in sorrow and muck – because we will be seeing Heaven’s diamonds hidden and shimmering beneath all the grime of this world.

Lord, give us eyes to see that beauty in each other instead of eyes of criticism, disrespect, and consumer-minded thinking as if the Body of Christ were a consumer good that we could rate on Yelp.

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New Giveaway: Win FREE Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital HD of Faith-Based Film "Little Boy"

The website I edit is running a great contest, especially if you’re a fan of faith-themed movies. Win a free blu-ray of “Little Boy,” which was just released. Click here:

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Caught Between a Crosswind of Summer, Coffee, and a Strange Homesickness

I was caught between a crosswind of summer and coffee.

It was a small moment, yes, but it stung me and stayed with me long enough to push its way into this post.

While holding a cup of coffee freshly brewed – the kind that smells like paradise itself (though non-coffee drinkers will point out that the aroma is false advertising; its bitter taste doesn’t match the glorious smell) – I stood, poised to take the first sip, when two things happened at once:

1) The fumes from the cup, which presented a mix of smells – caramel, almond perhaps, and the usual coffee fragrance that falls somewhere between the smell of freshly cut exotic wood from a faraway land and a chocolate factory with its doors wide open – floated into my face.

2) At the same time, a breeze from the open window nearby came in and brought other smells: the warmth of summer vegetation sitting in the mellow dryness of direct sunlight – trees, freshly cut grass, flower beds all warm and quiet – mixed with the salt of the Pacific Ocean breeze coming in from offshore.

The combination of these two things made me feel joy in the Lewisian sense. Here is what C.S. Lewis said about joy in his book “Surprised by Joy” (p. 166): “The very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting…” And he defined it this way: joy is that sharp pang of “unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction” (18).

It’s that feeling when something triggers a deep longing, something like nostalgia, but it goes beyond the past, beyond memories, beyond anything you know. It’s as if you were suddenly nostalgic for something that hasn’t happened yet. You have all the overwhelming longing of the deepest nostalgia, but its object is hidden from you. All you can do is lift your eyes to the empty blue night as stars light their lamp posts one by one, and you luxuriate in that intensity of desire for something you know not.

Joy therefore is not happiness perfected. It is hunger perfected.

In that same way, I longed for a vague far-off paradise – a strange homesickness for a home that I had never seen – and, looking back on it, I do feel a little silly perhaps. Coffee and a breeze from the window?  But there it is. I can’t deny it happened. Little things can have the strangest effects.

C.S. Lewis’s point was that the Holy Spirit uses these little moments of life to awaken a deep, abiding hunger for God. That is the hunger perfected. It is when Joy lights a lamp post inside of us that yearns perpetually – never fulfilled because there is no end to the infinite journey – to know Christ in all of His ceaseless beauty and richness.

And when those little moments of life come to awaken that hunger, we would do well to pay attention to them.

#CSLewis, #Joy, #JesusChrist, #StabsOfJoy

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Caught Between a Crosswind of Summer, Coffee, and a strange homesickness

I was caught between a crosswind of summer and coffee.

It was a small moment, yes, but it stung me and stayed with me long enough to push its way into this post.

While holding a cup of coffee freshly brewed – the kind that smells like paradise itself (though non-coffee drinkers will point out that the aroma is false advertising; its bitter taste doesn’t match the glorious smell) – I stood, poised to take the first sip, when two things happened at once:

1) The fumes from the cup, which presented a mix of smells – caramel, almond perhaps, and the usual coffee fragrance that falls somewhere between the smell of freshly cut exotic wood from a faraway land and a chocolate factory with its doors wide open – floated into my face.

2) At the same time, a breeze from the open window nearby came in and brought other smells: the warmth of summer vegetation sitting in the mellow dryness of direct sunlight – trees, freshly cut grass, flower beds all warm and quiet – mixed with the salt of the Pacific Ocean breeze coming in from offshore.

The combination of these two things made me feel joy in the Lewisian sense. Here is what C.S. Lewis said about joy in his book “Surprised by Joy” (p. 166): “The very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting…” And he defined it this way: joy is that sharp pang of “unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction” (18).

It’s that feeling when something triggers a deep longing, something like nostalgia, but it goes beyond the past, beyond memories, beyond anything you know. It’s as if you were suddenly nostalgic for something that hasn’t happened yet. You have all the overwhelming longing of the deepest nostalgia, but its object is hidden from you. All you can do is lift your eyes to the empty blue night as stars light their lamp posts one by one, and you luxuriate in that intensity of desire for something you know not.

Joy therefore is not happiness perfected. It is hunger perfected.

In that same way, I longed for a vague far-off paradise – a strange homesickness for a home that I had never seen – and, looking back on it, I do feel a little silly perhaps. Coffee and a breeze from the window?  But there it is. I can’t deny it happened. Little things can have the strangest effects.

C.S. Lewis’s point was that the Holy Spirit uses these little moments of life to awaken a deep, abiding hunger for God. That is the hunger perfected. It is when Joy lights a lamp post inside of us that yearns perpetually – never fulfilled because there is no end to the infinite journey – to know Christ in all of His ceaseless beauty and richness.

And when those little moments of life come to awaken that hunger, we would do well to pay attention to them.

#CSLewis, #Joy, #JesusChrist, #StabsOfJoy

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When U2 Wrote “One” They Unintentionally Preached a Sermon With Just Two Chords

When we hear a song on the radio, we often listen to the lyrics and feel encouraged by the truths stated plainly or perhaps poetically through the English language.

But how often do we listen to the musical language itself – the notes, the chords, etc. – and seek meaning there?

Did you know that the music theory – the chords, notes, and structure of the sounds – have profound influence over both our cognitive and emotional patterns? They convey meaning to us, whether we consciously acknowledge it or not.

After studying music theory intensely for my degree in music composition, I can say this confidently: the physics of sound can indeed carry messages and powerful propositions of truth to us as plainly as the lyrics. Music is just as much a language as the words we speak.

“One” by U2 (from their album “Achtung Baby)

I’ll show you an example. You have probably heard the song "One” by U2, one of the most famous rock songs in music history.

Here’s what U2 has told us plainly about this song’s meaning, through interviews and through the lyrics and other basic facts:

1) It’s not a blissful, peachy love song. As Bono has clarified over the years, it’s actually about breakup. (But it has to be the most beautiful, heart-rending, inspiring song about breakup ever written.)

2) The lyrics develop like a conversation between a man and a woman, though we only hear one side of the conversation. It feels like a plea or perhaps a melancholy surrender – a man realizing that the relationship is lost, and so he is speaking his final words on the subject with a conflicting mix of sadness, persistent love for the woman, anger, desperation, and a longing for the ideal of being “one flesh” with the other person but realizing how far short they’ve fallen. The anthemic chorus “one love” is spoken with sadness and irony. Something like, “We are one flesh, yet somehow we’ve let this disaster happen and now we’re falling apart. Why? How? What do we do now? If only we could truly be one. If only…”

3) It begins in a minor key (minor is what the West generally perceives as the “sad” chords) in the verse, and then changes to a major tonality in the chorus.

The Message Embedded in Two Chords

As mentioned in point three above, “One” begins in a minor key in the verse, and then changes to a major tonality in the chorus. Most songwriters will shrug at it. “So what. Minor to major. Been done a million times.”

True, but U2 doesn’t use just any minor to major combination. They use the relationship between something called the relative minor and major.

The relative who?

Let me explain this in more interesting terms.

If you’ve ever seen someone play the piano, it’s like a sprinter running up stadium steps step-by-step, running to the top, then running back to the bottom.

As you can see in the pianists fingers running up the keys, they’re playing a certain combination of notes in order. This careful ordering of notes is crucial to music. There are different musical scales because there are different ways to organize the way you run up and down the steps.

For example, maybe the runner will – this time – run two steps, skip a step and jump to the next one, then run three steps, then make a big jump and skip two steps, and he does this same pattern again and again to challenge himself: run up the steps, skip some, run more steps, skip one, etc..

Like the runner springing up the stadium steps in different ways, some scales skip different steps in different places.

Music is like finding 12 different ways to run up the stairs during your workout.

Well, here’s something wild about music: you can have two keys that sound completely different – one is sad sounding and the other one is happy sounding – and YET THEY USE THE EXACT SAME SCALE, THE EXACT SAME NOTES.

It’s amazing: one scale can contain two completely different sounding keys. In fact, every major (“happy sounding”) key has a soulmate: a relative minor (“sad sounding”) key that shares the exact same notes as the major key. They are one and the same, yet they sound completely different.

It’s not complicated though: they sound different because they start their “sequence” in different places – like starting your stair workout in the middle of the stairs while another runner starts from the bottom. You both are running the same stairs, but you’re in different places at different times.

How the Music Theory of “One” Speaks as Loud as Its Lyrics

This is how the song “One” can have two completely different sounding parts – the verse is sadder sounding and more despondent (because it’s in a minor key, A minor), but the chorus perks up and sounds warmer, happier (because it switches to C, the relative major of A minor).

Two different sounds. The exact same scale/notes.

Two in one. Sound familiar?

They’re one, but they’re not the same. Just as Bono sings in the song, “We’re one, but we’re not the same.”

The musical language is mirroring the message in the lyrics.

Of all the musical theory choices that U2 could have made in a song about two souls who were unified as “one” but then split apart, U2 chose to use this contradictory two-in-one musical phenomenon: two different keys – one cold, one hot, one happy, one sad, one blue, one red, seemingly opposite and incompatible – yet, from a certain angle, they still share the exact same notes. In a certain sense, the two are still one.

And when you place the two of them together in one space, the song is neither sad nor happy. It is a strange mix of both – a bittersweet melancholy and nostalgic grief that sways back and forth on its heels, unsure of its direction. From an emotional viewpoint, the song feels concussed or teetering with too much conflicting emotion coming from too many directions at once.

The music theory is, without any assistance from the lyrics, telling the story of the song – the song’s conflicted, one-flesh-torn-in-two tragic tale.

It is astonishing really, that music – as in the musical language itself, the chords and the notes, without any help from lyrics – can even do this.

So if music theory can convey truths about complex themes such as love and heartbreak, certainly it can convey truths about a wide number of themes.

And if you’re a songwriter trying to convey powerful themes and messages with your song, I urge you to think deeper than just lyrics. How will your chords and notes convey the story of your song?

[This article has also been published on RockinGodsHouse.com. If you’re a Christian songwriter, check out the many resources for songwriters and worship leaders on this page at Rocking God’s House.]

(#U2, #One, #MusicTheory, #Bono, #The Edge, #BreakUpSongs, #Love, #Romance)

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Achtung Baby: How Two Guitar Chords Can Speak Truth (Without Lyrics)

When we hear a song on the radio, we often listen to the lyrics and feel encouraged by the truths stated plainly or perhaps poetically through the English language.

But how often do we listen to the musical language itself – the notes, the chords, etc. – and seek meaning there?

Did you know that the music theory – the chords, notes, and structure of the sounds – have profound influence over both our cognitive and emotional patterns? They convey meaning to us, whether we consciously acknowledge it or not.

After studying music theory intensely for my degree in music composition, I can say this confidently: the physics of sound can indeed carry messages and powerful propositions of truth to us as plainly as the lyrics. Music is just as much a language as the words we speak.

“One” by U2 (from their album “Achtung Baby)

I’ll show you an example. You have probably heard the song "One” by U2, one of the most famous rock songs in music history.

Here’s what U2 has told us plainly about this song’s meaning, through interviews and through the lyrics and other basic facts:

1) It’s not a blissful, peachy love song. As Bono has clarified over the years, it’s actually about breakup. (But it has to be the most beautiful, heart-rending, inspiring song about breakup ever written.)

2) The lyrics develop like a conversation between a man and a woman, though we only hear one side of the conversation. It feels like a plea or perhaps a melancholy surrender – a man realizing that the relationship is lost, and so he is speaking his final words on the subject with a conflicting mix of sadness, persistent love for the woman, anger, desperation, and a longing for the ideal of being “one flesh” with the other person but realizing how far short they’ve fallen. The anthemic chorus “one love” is spoken with sadness and irony. Something like, “We are one flesh, yet somehow we’ve let this disaster happen and now we’re falling apart. Why? How? What do we do now? If only we could truly be one. If only…”

3) It begins in a minor key (minor is what the West generally perceives as the “sad” chords) in the verse, and then changes to a major tonality in the chorus.

The Message Embedded in Two Chords

As mentioned in point three above, “One” begins in a minor key in the verse, and then changes to a major tonality in the chorus. Most songwriters will shrug at it. “So what. Minor to major. Been done a million times.”

True, but U2 doesn’t use just any minor to major combination. They use the relationship between something called the relative minor and major.

The relative who?

Let me explain this in more interesting terms.

If you’ve ever seen someone play the piano, it’s like a sprinter running up stadium steps step-by-step, running to the top, then running back to the bottom.

As you can see in the pianists fingers running up the keys, they’re playing a certain combination of notes in order. This careful ordering of notes is crucial to music. There are different musical scales because there are different ways to organize the way you run up and down the steps.

For example, maybe the runner will – this time – run two steps, skip a step and jump to the next one, then run three steps, then make a big jump and skip two steps, and he does this same pattern again and again to challenge himself: run up the steps, skip some, run more steps, skip one, etc..

Like the runner springing up the stadium steps in different ways, some scales skip different steps in different places.

Music is like finding 12 different ways to run up the stairs during your workout.

Well, here’s something wild about music: you can have two keys that sound completely different – one is sad sounding and the other one is happy sounding – and YET THEY USE THE EXACT SAME SCALE, THE EXACT SAME NOTES.

It’s amazing: one scale can contain two completely different sounding keys. In fact, every major (“happy sounding”) key has a soulmate: a relative minor (“sad sounding”) key that shares the exact same notes as the major key. They are one and the same, yet they sound completely different.

It’s not complicated though: they sound different because they start their “sequence” in different places – like starting your stair workout in the middle of the stairs while another runner starts from the bottom. You both are running the same stairs, but you’re in different places at different times.

How the Music Theory of “One” Speaks as Loud as Its Lyrics

This is how the song “One” can have two completely different sounding parts – the verse is sadder sounding and more despondent (because it’s in a minor key, A minor), but the chorus perks up and sounds warmer, happier (because it switches to C, the relative major of A minor).

Two different sounds. The exact same scale/notes.

Two in one. Sound familiar?

They’re one, but they’re not the same. Just as Bono sings in the song, “We’re one, but we’re not the same.”

The musical language is mirroring the message in the lyrics.

Of all the musical theory choices that U2 could have made in a song about two souls who were unified as “one” but then split apart, U2 chose to use this contradictory two-in-one musical phenomenon: two different keys – one cold, one hot, one happy, one sad, one blue, one red, seemingly opposite and incompatible – yet, from a certain angle, they still share the exact same notes. In a certain sense, the two are still one.

And when you place the two of them together in one space, the song is neither sad nor happy. It is a strange mix of both – a bittersweet melancholy and nostalgic grief that sways back and forth on its heels, unsure of its direction. From an emotional viewpoint, the song feels concussed or teetering with too much conflicting emotion coming from too many directions at once.

The music theory is, without any assistance from the lyrics, telling the story of the song – the song’s conflicted, one-flesh-torn-in-two tragic tale.

It is astonishing really, that music – as in the musical language itself, the chords and the notes, without any help from lyrics – can even do this.

So if music theory can convey truths about complex themes such as love and heartbreak, certainly it can convey truths about a wide number of themes.

And if you’re a songwriter trying to convey powerful themes and messages with your song, I urge you to think deeper than just lyrics. How will your chords and notes convey the story of your song?

[This article has also been published on RockinGodsHouse.com. If you’re a Christian songwriter, check out the many resources for songwriters and worship leaders on this page at Rocking God’s House.]

(#U2, #One, #MusicTheory, #Bono, #The Edge, #BreakUpSongs, #Love, #Romance)

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