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A few tweaks to improve “Draw Me Close To You.”

A life in the Spirit, Doing Theology, Music, Spiritual direction, , , , , , , ,

I was walking in the woods listening to music, which I love to do when I am not walking with my wife — I like her even more than my music!

I realized something about my music as I walked. I have three versions of one song on my playlists — one by the artist who made it popular, Michael W. Smith (Kelly Carpenter wrote it), one by Marvin Winans, and one by me! I guess I like “Draw Me Close To You!”

But now, after further meditation, I want a rewrite. I will record mine again with improved words, once I am done writing this.

The original song was written because Kelly Carpenter was tired. He was doing church hard and losing the reason he was doing it. He saw himself getting in the way of God’s work. He wanted to get out of the way, to get back to his first love and do things the right way, regardless of the cost.

That’s OK until it goes too far. His lovely little mantra has inspired renewal all over the globe by now (i.e. – a Malagasy version). But I think people may take away some unfortunate messages from it.

A few lines of “Draw Me Close” need a re-write

Draw me close to you
Never let me go
I lay it all down again,
to hear you say that I’m your friend

There is a problem here. I think underneath the lines, he is saying, “I don’t believe you love me unless I lay down my life.” Some people miss the whole point of the gospel because when they hear Jesus saying, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” they think Jesus is teaching them a lesson rather than giving them a gift! They think Jesus is putting the sacrifice on them instead of himself!

You are my desire
No one else will do
Cause nothing else can take your place
[I wanna] feel the warmth of your embrace

No rewrite needed here. It is so true. “All my loves are reflections of yours, Lord.” But let’s go on.

Help me find the way
bring me back to you.

I think there is an emphasis in this song, and in most of Evangelicalism, that reinforces, “I need to find the way.” I suppose if you’re not sure you are God’s friend, you probably feel lost most of the time. Several of my Christian clients just can’t be found. Being a lost seeker is their identity. If they stopped being one, they would betray who they are, be false to themselves, lose control.

[Cause] You’re all I want

This might be the worst line. I don’t think it  is true. This song is full of a lot of other wants. He wants to feel better. He wants to live the right way. He wants to stop wasting his energy on foolishness. He wants to look good in the eyes of others. He wants to write a good song. (He wants credit for writing it, even if Michael W. Smith got all the money and fame). He wants God’s approval. He wants security that he is close to God. He wants to feel things.

Some of his wants are needs. Some of them are desires. Most of it is mixed up and that is just how it is with us.

You’re all I’ve ever needed

This might be the best line. So true. At the bottom, top and all around our needs is our need to live securely with God in the love of Christ and the nurturing of the Spirit.

You’re all I want
Help me know you are near.

When I sing this, this is what I mean: “Ultimately, you’re all I want. In the meantime, help me.” Because I don’t always know what I want or know you are all around me. What’s more, I don’t respect my desires, which often makes me feel like I ought to be in control of myself and what going on around me, when I obviously am not.

Maybe we just don’t know what we want

When it comes to desire, Christians, especially, are not too conversant. They think things like, “I need to lay down my own desires so I can get in line with what God desires for me.” Philip Sheldrake wrote a whole book about getting over that error in his thinking. Here is a bit.

On the other hand, desires undoubtedly overlap with our needs and neediness, although it is still possible to distinguish between them. Both may be conscious or unconscious. In fact, it is not unusual to experience a conflict between the conscious and unconscious levels of ourselves. As we reflect on our lives, we can come to understand more clearly how unconscious needs had the capacity to drive us to behave in ways that we actually disliked or that failed to express our truest self. For example, we may be driven by a deeply buried need to succeed, and to be seen to succeed, while on a conscious level we say to ourselves and to others how much we desire to operate differently!

When we choose to talk of befriending desires rather than simply responding to needs we are implying that desires involve a positive and active reaching out to something or someone. Such a movement goes beyond our temporary reactions to immediate circumstances and actually touches upon deeper questions of our identity and our ideals. — Befriending our Desires Philip Sheldrake

Rather than laying down our desires and pretending we know what we want, we should respect our God-given capacity to desire and work out our desires in love.

Strangely enough, David Brooks touched on the same subject last week as he lamented the state of the U.S. culture, dominated, as it is, with micro moments of dopamine jolts which keep us from realizing our deeper meaning. He says:

The problem with our culture today is not too much desire but the miniaturization of desire, settling for these small, short-term hits. Our culture used to be full of institutions that sought to arouse people’s higher desires — the love of God, the love of country, the love of learning, the love of being excellent at a craft. Sermons, teachers, mentors and the whole apparatus of moral formation were there to elongate people’s time horizons and arouse the highest desires.

The culture of consumerism, of secularism, of hedonism has undermined those institutions and that important work. The culture has changed. As Philip Rieff noticed all the way back in his 1966 book, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, “Religious man was born to be saved; psychological man is born to be pleased.”  — “The Junkification of American Life” by David Brooks (NYT Sep 5)

“Draw Me Close to You” is probably another little dopamine hit for a lot of worshipers. When they heard the first few piano chords the night the video was made, they got a chill of recognition and anticipation. The next song after the video was another little hit with little content but lots of feeling that left them wanting more.

When the “psychological man” (it was 1966, sorry women) gets to the words, looking to be pleased, I think they are more likely to be displeased, essentially unpleasable and perpetually looking for the next thing that might satisfy their unbridled hunger.

Maybe Rieff should have also said the “psychological beings” are born to be pleasing and never quite achieving the necessary splendor — TikTokkers getting abs to get clicks, Christians getting passion worthy of their ideal self and God’s approval.

Let’s make a few adjustments

Draw me close to you
Never let me go

Let’s keep these lines. Just think of them another way. Don’t sing them like you’re a wild bronco resisting  and needing to be broken. Sing it like a  distraught child who needs to be wrapped in security and comfort. Try it. See if you can be drawn in close to God right now. God is close to you.

Instead of  “I lay it all down again, “ try

I tune my ear for grace again

Instead of “to hear you say that I’m your friend,” try being more present, less aspirational,

I hear you say that I’m your friend

Or have you never heard that, personally, even though Jesus says it in John 15?

Let’s keep this part:

You are my desire
No one else will do
Cause nothing else can take your place

Just a small edit, below. Because it is so true: all my loves are reflections of yours, Lord.  Let’s lean into that. I don’t just “want to” feel your embrace; I welcome it right now.

I feel the warmth of your embrace

Instead of “Help me find the way
bring me back to you” try:

Guide me on the way
Through the dark to you.

I general, I think this song could use more mystery and less transaction. Regardless, let’s not be perpetual prodigal children, wandering in our individual wilderness. We are not in or out of salvation, we are in it all the time. I think this song was always about being in it with God, even when I feel a bit in the dark.

Instead of “[Cause] You’re all I want,” try

You’re who I want

Let’s keep it personal. God is not merely a better desire than the other desires I can choose. Besides, she chose us, according to John 15, we did not choose her.

Let’s keep this:

You’re all I’ve ever needed

It is so true. At the bottom, top and all around our needs is our need to live securely with God in the love of Christ and the nurturing of the Spirit.

You’re all I want
Help me know you are near.

Let’s just keep in mind, we’re saying, “Ultimately, you’re all I want. In the meantime, help me.” Because I can’t even keep myself in the reality of your nearness.

With just a few simple tweaks

Is it OK to tweak a very popular song? I obviously think so. So does Michael W. Smith, since he changed the words to the original (which actually made more sense than his). I think my tweaks help us in three important ways:

  • They help us get out of our power struggle with God.
  • They acknowledge we are full of needs and full of desires. Our needs are not always aligned with our desires. Our needs matter to God. Our desires lead us to experience God. There is a tension between them, but not a dichotomy. We need to be aware of the tension and not think our needs are desires and vice versa.
  • They help us not to lie to ourselves and God. Saying, “You’re all I’ve ever needed,” acknowledges our sense of never being satisfied.

Let’s amplify that last bullet to close and acknowledge we are all needy right now. Even as I sing “You’re all I’ve ever needed,” in the back of my mind I am worried I am spending too much time writing this post and wondering if anyone even cares if I did. What’s more, I responded late to someone’s email and I think they’ll think poorly of me. I also ate too much for lunch at a smorgasbord yesterday and feel like I need to get up and get some exercise.

Singing “You’re who/all I want,” also acknowledges the largeness of our desire. Desire is what I worship with. It is what gives me hope of something better. It is place in me where I decide to do something that is from my best and meets God’s best like a kiss. “You are my desire” answers back to God’s desire for me and the burning passion of Jesus to see me come to fullness of life.

Simple songs make a difference. I can sing Kelly Carpenter’s song and let it mean what I want. But I can also sing it with him and relate to the strain he felt when he wrote it. He felt a bit bad about himself and how he was blowing it. He wanted help to get on the right path. Not so bad.

But I just want to note, his desire for God had apparently already put him on the right path. After he had his epiphany, he went home and wrote a song God was drawing him close to write. All over the world, people use it to express their deepest desire.

Most of our worship should acknowledge how much we want to be close to God, not just how much we would like to be close if were weren’t so terrible. Because God has drawn close to us and is close to us right now.

In this world you will suffer: The Lord’s unloved promise

A life in the Spirit, , ,

Each personal defense system was built to avoid or alleviate suffering inflicted by our family and then inflicted by the world, as soon as we stepped into it. When I called my contractor the other day, his kids were sheltering in place in the background and beating one another up. He said, “They hit each other one minute and love on each other the next until you can’t tell the difference.” One of them had just come up to say, even though dad was on the phone, “But Dad, he hit me!”  We feel powerless to defend ourselves against our suffering but spend most of our time trying to access enough power to stop it and get through to love. Something or someone is always supposed to be fixing the injustices and afflictions of the world so we can get loved.

Or so we think. My friend’s dad got drunk every week for who knows why. It would seem it was because he felt bad about his life and had found a way to get relief. But his sons experienced his relief as terror, since he often came home angry. Their lives were uncertain when the thing they needed to feel most was certainty. Now that they are older, they struggle with anxiety, since everything feels uncertain and they feel left alone to get it under control.

Or so they think. The pandemic threatens to push them over the edge. As they are hypervigilant to avoid the disease, feelings from their deep memories are triggered. They’re trying to keep off or clean off the latest manifestation of the dis-ease they have faced their whole lives!

I Have Overcome The World" | Efisio Cross - YouTube
Click for “I Have Overcome The World” by Efisio Cross

How do I feel OK with suffering?

Now that these friends are Christians, it seems even more evident that God should be taking care of them and helping them to avoid suffering. God should be that something or someone who is supposed to be fixing the injustice of the world. The logic seems clear, “If God loves me, shouldn’t he be a better father and spare me this pain?” Sounds good to me.

But Jesus plainly says: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). I don’t think he meant to speak only to his first disciples when he said that, either. He meant to speak to you and me, too.

People want peace in the middle of their mess and they can’t get it. One of the reasons is because they have always been certain that their brother should stop hitting them! (And he should!) But he probably won’t. And the 1% probably won’t stop trying to make the economic depression we are headed into be anything less than as profitable as possible for them, either!  There will be trouble. And there you go. Do you say, “But I don’t like trouble; trouble triggers my deepest fears; is Jesus going to save me or not?”

The Greek word thlipsin is translated a number of synonymous ways in John 16:33: trouble, tribulation, trials and sorrows, suffering, oppression, distress, and affliction. We can’t go one day without feeling these things. I called to cancel Direct TV – it was trouble; I forgot my mask when I went out; the contractors broke a ceiling fixture in the hall; the microwave fell off the wall and broke the stove; I hurt my back – and that was just one day! Then there is the perennial stuff: my friend was going to call and they forgot, my mother won’t speak to me, my father lost his memory – and I lost my job when they made us all shelter in place and then the unemployment compensation system crashed.

“Be of good cheer,” Jesus says, “be en-couraged, be filled with courage.” Other translations say, “Take heart, cheer up, be brave, have confidence,” because, Jesus says, “I have overcome the world.” Well, that is the problem! People believe Jesus when he says that but they don’t always feel it.

There are a lot of reasons we don’t get the peace

Most of the reasons we don’t get the peace Jesus promises have to do with how we see things. Jesus makes statements like the famous line above to his disciples because they fundamentally have to change their view of the world.

  1. We have to admit the world is a problem every day.
  2. We have to accept the world, including myself, is not a problem I am condemned to fix (or not) every day.
  3. We must come to feel mysterious, beautiful and loving forces beyond our control and even understanding are at work on our behalf. We we can trust Jesus to bring things to right.

How you see yourself, others and God starts out as part of the problem. But Jesus says, “Cheer up! You are going to overcome with me!”

Changing my point of view is all there is to getting peace? No. But if the “eyes of your heart are dark, how great the darkness!” If we follow around the anxieties of our unen-couraged selves and overlay them with habits of control or aggression or despair, we are going to prove impervious to peace. Saying it is God’s fault my brother hit me, or making sure my Dad knows it is not my fault, or just accepting being hit won’t end up in peace. We have to live the new life that comes with overcoming the old:

  1. Don’t rely on the passing away world,
  2. Bring what you have to the dying world and let your truth and love bear whatever fruit in bears
  3. Don’t just see, but trust the goodness of God Jesus has won for you.

Albert Schweitzer in Lambaréné – Iconic Photos

Part of the big trouble we will always have in the world is not getting moved along by the trouble — getting used to trouble instead of suffering it. We’ve got to respond to Jesus when he is teaching us, not just know about his teaching. We need to overcome with him. In his memoir Albert Schweitzer recounted hiring doctors for his hospital in the jungle of Gabon. He said he never hired anyone who thought he was doing something grand and heroic. He knew the only doctors who would last were those who thought what they were doing was as ordinary and necessary as doing the dishes: “There are no heroes of action — only heroes of renunciation and suffering.” He heard what Jesus was saying. The Lord’s own suffering overcomes the world, not just his resistance to it and surely not his resentment of it.

We need to train for peace

We may not suffer with Jesus because we can smell hardship a mile away. But to get peace  we will need to train ourselves to change our views and our habits to match the way to peace that leads through suffering. Sticking with Jesus in peace is not a spontaneous flowering of good character or the fruit of excellence, it is doing what we are trained to do. It manifests not in those whose training spared them hardship but in those whose training embraced hardship and taught them to overcome it. Gwen and I have been doing some reminiscing this week as our house is sold and our stuff is moved. The house itself taught us to overcome, since it was a constant problem to master. But, even more, it represents an era in which we both took on the suffering and trained to be our true selves. Gwen’s quest is represented  by her education for psychotherapy and my quest is represented in spearheading the planting of Circle of Hope. Facing the troubles has been a sweet suffering all along the way, and it has been accompanied by an ever-deeper peace.

Some people are happy this moment in history, marked by coronavirus, may launch a change in the way we raise and train all our young, at all ages. It may exorcise the tide of “safetyism,” which has gone overboard. The grandiose people of the empire float on their high tide thinking they can control their destiny and prevent anything that can go wrong. They are either in denial and a menace to others, or deep in guilt and a menace to themselves. The virus is another reminder that hardship is woven into the warp and woof existence. Training a young person is training her or him to master hardship, to endure suffering and, by building something new from the wreckage, redeem it.

That’s a big part of what Jesus was saying when he said, “Be of good cheer!” You are OK whether there is trouble or not! On the one hand, you have strength beyond yourself to create goodness out of rubble. Even more, on the other hand, Jesus is a living promise that your suffering is not useless, even if it is just reminding you that you need to be saved. Like the Lord’s suffering resulted in new life wherever he walked and resurrection after he died, so will ours.

That piece of logic might not help you feel peace even if it works wonders for me. One of my friends texted me: “If I can learn to trust an uncertain promise from the Lord I might just be saved.” I replied, “Yes. You may come to know another certainty that is free of the former manacles. You’re on the way.” At this point in my life, I don’t think it would be great if Jesus prevented all my suffering. I don’t blame God for the uncertainty of every day. Even at my age, I am looking forward to the unpredictability of what will happen next in love. I will have trouble, but it is trouble that is being redeemed, and then the fullness of overcoming!