A buddy of mine showed me this song last week and it rocked my world.  It’s called “Naive” by Sleeping at Last and the lyrics are powerful.  I don’t know if the artists of Sleeping At Last are believers in Christ but there is an incredible spiritual depth in this song.

Religion is a breeding ground
Where the Devil’s work is deeply found,
With teeth as sharp as cathedral spires,
Slowly sinking in.

God knows that I’ve been naive
But I think it makes Him proud of me.
Now it’s so hard to separate
My disappointments from His Name.

Because shadows stretch behind the truth,
Where stained glass offers broken clues
And fear ties knots and pulls them tight.
It leaves us paralyzed.

But in the end such tired words will rest.
The truth will reroute the narrow things they’ve said.
The marionette strings will lower and untie
And out of the ashes, love will be realized.

God knows that we’ve been naive
And a bit nearsighted to say the least.
It’s broken glass at children’s feet
That gets swept aside unexpectedly.

The people who Jesus criticized the most were the people with the most religion.  These were the people who had narrowed the arena of faith with a constricted grasp, choking the very life out of it in the name of righteousness.  These were the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the teachers of the law.

History is filled with people who have taken the teachings of Jesus and value our own interpretations of His teachings as being right or correct.  The Church has taken these interpretations and placed them in our art, our stained glass, and our icons and allowed the pictures to be interpreted in each person’s own way.

Our naivety in this assumption is that these pictures are complete, that they communicate a complete and fully accurate understanding of these stories and teachings of Jesus.  As soon as we begin to place our interpretations on these pictures they begin to lose their purity in meaning.  We’re human, we don’t have it all figured out, and we keep seeing things through a broken lens as long as we stay on this side of eternity.

There is much, much more to this song than the short amount I’ve shared and I’m not about to say that what I’ve shared is fully accurate.  I’m sure that there are parts that I’ve missed and even parts that I’ve ironically misinterpreted.  But I have to keep wrestling with it and keep searching for a deeper impact on this song.

What are your thoughts?