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Jesus Christ this is a good song!
Recently, I've been putting CDs in my CD changer that I haven't listened to in a while, one result of which is that I heard the song "Fly From Heaven" by Toad the Wet Sprocket and was reminded how I rather like that song. In fact, I find it interesting enough to write a whole blog entry on it.
Like many people in my peer group, I at least owned Toad's breakthrough album Fear, but that was it. I discovered "Fly From Heaven" (from Dulcinea) in college while serving as the musical director for a Christian a cappella group (not one of my least hypocritical activities in college) called The Cornerstones. Like the other three a cappella groups on campus (and many others nationwide), we performed arrangements for unaccompanied voices of music that mostly didn't come packaged that way in the first place. All Christian-oriented, of course. To counteract the inevitable loss of cool points that this focus engendered, we looked to perform some things that were by mainstream groups. I brought in a couple U2 songs this way and the very-talented Chris Meyers '02 (now singing and playing guitar in a duo called The Bittersweets) brought "Fly From Heaven" to our attention and arranged it for us. In the course of preparing it, though, I noticed that it's actually a rather ironic choice for a Christian music group. Check out the words here (for instance).
It may be fairly obvious, if you're approaching this from a Christian perspective that the Paul referred to is the apostle Paul who authored much of what is not the gospels in the new testament. But what the hell is going on? This song is actually about a fierce conflict that occurred a couple thousand years ago in a sect of Judaism that became Christianity. One source for this is Robert Eisenman's hefty tome James the Brother of Jesus. The basic premise is that Jesus's brother James was the true heir of Jesus's teachings, not Paul and Peter. Although James is marginalized in Christianity's canonical texts (while the two Ps are exalted), the argument is that Jesus's actual teachings were far more Jewish, nationalist, and apocalypic (and championed by his brother James) than the version created largely by Paul, which was pacifist, nation-transcending, and faith-based. A similar line is drawn in Joel Carmichael's The Death of Jesus. My point here, however, is less to get into these arguments than to get into the song.
So. It starts "Paul is making me nervous / Paul is making me scared / Walks into this room and swaggers / Like he's God's own messenger." This is James speaking, and he's right to be worried since he's about to be consigned to the rubbish bin of history and theology. It goes on "Changed the name of my brother," presumably either the way that his "name" becomes Jesus Christ (really a title) or else the Hellenization of the Jewish Jeshua (Joshua) into "Jesus." Take your pick. Paul has also "changed the things that he said," which alludes to the argument that much of the gospels are, in fact, obfuscations of what Jesus said for the purpose of supporting Paul's version of Christianity. Paul also "Says that he speaks to him / But he never even knew the man." Paul never knew Jesus when he Jesus was alive--his contact was a visionary experience after the crucifixion, though whether it was a vision or a physical contact with "the risen Christ" is open for debate. The last line of that verse seems to be a contrast between himself and Paul, that is while Paul never even knew Jesus, James would give his life for his brother.
In the chorus, we see how the Jesus that James knew is slipping away "like water through [his] hands" as Paul would "give him any ending"--that is to say, Paul would re-write Jesus's ending of dying on the cross to be the son of God (or God himself) dying for our sins, while James would interpret it as the death of a man who was holy and fought against the Romans, but wasn't God himself. The last lines of the refrain seem to be a challenge--if Jesus was what Paul says he was, would he really come back to earth? I'm not sure I entirely get the argument here, but it's kind of catchy when it's sung.
The next verse would seem to be suggesting that, because humans are "broken from within," we will (should?) take what message we need, what we can get, even so far as escaping from this world to "another land."
The next stanza is a really telling one. "They took my brother / They ripped him from me / To twist his words as they did his body." Whereas he Romans took him and destroyed his body, Paul is taking Jesus's beliefs and teachings and twisting them for his own ends. In the process, Paul "denied his family" (Joseph doesn't get to be his father and how many of you knew Jesus even had a brother?--instead he has to be immaculate, god-in-the-flesh unsullied by any more family (a mother) than he has to be). In fact, by making Jesus something other than what he really was, Paul "denied his beauty." And for what? "To lie him down at the feet / Of those he couldn't save." That is, if Jesus was a teacher rather than God, then the people he could save were basically those he actually ministered to, the Jews he met and ministered to. Those he couldn't save were all the people he never met, those that Paul is now claiming can be saved by believing in Jesus, i.e. everyone.
The song finally leaves the basic question unanswered. "Will it be the end / Or is he still ascending?" That is, was his death the end--as James seems to be asserting--or is He still rising? The question is left open, but we are still returned to that skeptical "But if he's all you say..."
In fact, of course, the whole song must be profoundly skeptical even to raise the issue. What's at stake here is nothing less than the identity (including the divinity) of Jesus, and the narrator we're given is James, who is by definition arguing against Paul. Most people who would hear this song wouldn't even know that there was such a possibility that the Christianity we've all learned is just a distortion of a Jewish holy man's teachings. Therefore, even raising this as a possibility is to draw attention to this viewpoint. Even if the question is left open at the end, the clear mark of its skepticism is that there's even a question to be left open.
Who knew that popular music could raise such questions--too bad Toad broke up. Glen Philips (lead singer) put out an album Abulum and has done some other work since then (live album and collaboration with members of Nickel Creek), but his solo work has hardly enjoyed the popularity of Toad the Wet Sprocket. Oh, and did I mention that the music in "Fly From Heaven" isn't bad either? Check it out if you get the chance.
And you can see, of course, why this was an ironic choice for that college Christian music group to perform. "Hey, we love Jesus! But maybe He's not who we all thought he was!"
So it goes.