Joe Satriani, "God Is Crying", Holy Week, and the Attributes of God

Recently, I have been listening to Joe Satriani’s latest album “Black Swans and Worm Hole Wizards”.  Over this Holy Week, I have been particularly drawn to track 11 “God Is Crying”:

http://www.myspace.com/joesatriani/music/albums/black-swans-and-wormhole-wizards-16732530 
(Above is the link to the album “Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards” on Satriani’s MySpace page.  Scroll down to track 11 and click on the play icon.  If you do not have a MySpace membership you can only listen to about three songs in their entirety; if you have a MySpace membership you have unlimited access to listen to whole albums that are posted on an artist’s page)

For those of you who may not know much about Joe Satriani (a.k.a. Satch, the Professor, the Extremist), he is a rock and roll guitar virtuoso, innovator, and technical genius.  He has released 13 studio albums, sold over 10 million albums, and he has had 15 Grammy nominations (he has the 2^nd most Grammy nominations without a win, after Brian McKnight).  He is a guitar player’s guitar player. (Most of the content of this paragraph was taken from Wikipedia.)

Through Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday – looking forward to Easter – among other things pertaining to the atonement, I have been reflecting on God’s sorrow over human sin, Jesus weeping at Lazarus’ tomb (John 11:1—43, esp. v. 35), and Jesus weeping over Jerusalem (Luke 19:28—44, esp. v. 41).  And, so, I have been listening to “God Is Crying” by Joe Satriani.  By Satch’s own admission on a Facebook video podcast, this song “is not what you would expect given the title “God Is Crying””, which you may have gathered for yourself by listening to the song on his MySpace page.  You may have expected to hear a slow, moody, lilting, haunting melody line, or you may have expected to hear a series of scale runs, some with a smooth descending legato, and others with punctuated staccato evoking the image of streaming or falling tears.  Instead, as Satch describes it, “God Is Crying” is an “intense” and “explosive” song with a “heavy groove.”  In an A flat minor key with 4/4 drive, the song is powerful and aggressive.  And, I would also describe the song as being a bit angry.  Overtop of the drive, Satch lays down a soaring melody line with heavy use of a wha peddle (made famous by the Dunlop Cry Baby Wha peddle). This is what makes this song so interesting to me during Holy Week: the song seems to depict God’s crying, weeping, sorrowful tears mixed with intense power and anger. 

Now, it’s not that Satch isn’t capable of playing a slow song with a dark, somber, smooth tone (he is known for being able to play such songs alongside blazing fast technical masterpieces).  Two examples of Satch’s slow, easy, moody, haunting, and lilting melodies come to mind from his last album “Super Colossal”:

First, “The Meaning of Love” (track # 8)

Second, “A Love Eternal” (track # 12)
http://www.myspace.com/joesatriani/music/albums/super-colossal-8120159
(Actually, the song “Slow and Easy” from the album “Engines of Creation” came to mind first, but I couldn’t find a link to an online sample.)

As to those songs filled with legato and staccato scale runs that fall like tears, two songs come to mind:

First, “Made of Tears” from the album “Super Colossal” (track # 9)

http://www.myspace.com/joesatriani/music/albums/super-colossal-8120159

Second, “Wind in the Trees” from the album “Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards” (track # 10 – as you listen to this track try to picture a willow tree being moved by the wind.)

http://www.myspace.com/joesatriani/music/albums/black-swans-and-wormhole-wizards-16732530

In the March 9, 2011 issue of Guitar World Magazine Satch was asked about the song “God Is Crying”; these are his comments:

I was thinking about God – the concept of God actually.  Where is he?  Why do we need him? . . . But I started to think, what would happen if God came down to earth?  Not just as a spirit, but really came down here physically and walked around and took a look at what we’ve done to the world.  And, all I could think was, he would cry.

In a heightened way, from Advent and Christmas through Lent and Easter, Christians are confronted with the reality that God, through the Second Person of the Trinity – Jesus Christ, came to earth and took on the form of a man – he took on the form of a lowly humble servant (Phil. 2: 5—10).  And, Jesus wept (John 11:35).  He didn’t just weep over what we had done to the world (though this surely is part of what causes God sorrow).  He wept over us and our corrupt sinful nature, which causes us to commit sin and defile God’s precious creation.  Surely the way we twist and distort culture causes God sorrow; surely the way we pollute and abuse nature causes God sorrow; surely our broken homes and our chuck full prisons cause God sorrow; surely wars and poverty cause God sorrow.  Yet, it’s the sinful heart of man caused Jesus Christ to weep. 

Here’s the good news, God didn’t just weep and wring his hands in the far distant recesses of heaven; he did something about our sinful predicament.  (This is where I think Satriani is intuitively on to something in his song “God Is Crying”.)  When God did something about our sinful existence, his sorrow over sinful mankind was joined with his omnipotent power.  When God redeemed us from our sin, his love and mercy stood side by side with his just wrath. 

In a Facebook video podcast, Satch said, “It [the songs juxtaposed title and heavy grove] makes sense when you think about it.”  Well, I thought about it, and it does make perfect sense.  The genocidal slaughter of 800,000 in Rwanda causes me to weep, while at the same time it gave rise to appropriate anger at the perpetrators of such atrocities.  As human beings we all experience such a mix of emotions on a regular basis.  Now, amplify that instance of Rwandan atrocity by the whole of human history; and, then, try to imagine viewing that sum total of human history from God’s perfect perspective.  (An impossible exercise, yet a valuable exercise in the hermeneutic of “how much more then does God . . .”) 

Is there some way of making sense of a God who is at the same time sorrowful, wrathful, loving, merciful, compassionate, angry, omnipotent, holy, and just?  The key to this question is the doctrine of the simplicity of God.  This is not simplicity in the sense of a simple back woods country bumpkin.  By the simplicity of God we mean that God is one and his attributes are united in a simple whole.  God is not a conglomeration of attributes that are linked together like so many Legos.  God’s attributes are inextricably united in the oneness of God’s being.  Where one of his attributes is, there all his other attributes are.  And, the cross is the best place to see the beautiful commingling of God’s attributes.  In his love, compassion, and mercy God sent his Son Jesus Christ to die to save sinners.  God’s holiness and justice is maintained when Jesus Christ died to pay the price of our sin.  The right wrath of God against human sin is satisfied upon the cross.  God exercises his omnipotent power by vanquishing sin, death and Satan through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

So, what about Satch’s musings and questions about God?  God did come into our midst as a man, and he did cry.  But, he did so much more than weep over the human condition: he did something about the human condition; He sent his Son Jesus Christ to die for our sins.

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Grand Funk Railroad & Alfred H. Ackley: Is "Feeling" God as Good as Knowing God?

I can get excited by those moments in life when there is a confluence of culture, Scripture, and solid theological teaching.  In those moments when something in culture raises an issue, Scripture (with the aid of good teachers) defines reality and readjusts my worldview.  Then, as a result, I become more able to engage the surrounding culture and the issues raised within it.  The spectacles of Scripture provide a clear view of reality (Calvin’s Institutes, I.6.i.).

One of these cultural, Scriptural, theological confluences hit me this afternoon.  I was listening to a classic rock radio station and on came Grand Funk Railroad’s song “I Can Feel Him in the Morning”.  If you don’t know the song, the basic premise is that God and his reality are easily intuited by children, and as adults we too can rest assured that God exists because we “Can feel him in the morning . . . [we] can feel him in the evening too.”  The song begins with a spoken word intro of several children giving their innocent musings about who God must be and the difference between good and bad.  For example, one child says, “He can see us whatever we do . . . whatever we do.  He has such powerful eyes, he has to have thousands and millions and billions.  And he can still see us when we’re bad.”  The intro concludes with a boy saying, “I think . . . hum, there are more people that are bad then there are good.  And, hum, when you are good, you live forever.  And, if you’re bad, then you die when you die.”  Then, the verses each give expression to life’s difficulties which cause us to lose faith.  In response to the hard realities of each verse, lead vocalist Mark Farner confidently proclaims of God:

“I can feel him in the morning.  I can feel him in the evening too.

I can hear him in the morning, tell’n me what to do.

Got to make a new world, got to make the old one right.

I can see him in the morning, I can see him in the stars at night.”

Whenever God or Christianity gets a nod of approval form pop-culture, Christians are quick to claim the approval as a viable validation of Christianity and its veracity (c.f. “Jesus Is Just Alright” by the Doobie Brothers).  However, as Christians, we may be coming up short with respect to cultural engagement.  When cultural figures or institutions express appreciation for God and Christianity, something important may be going on, and we aught to pay attention to these expressions.  We don’t know what God is ultimately doing in the hearts of those who express vague appreciation for the Christian faith.  But, the culturally engaged Christian can’t just let things stay there; the culturally engaged Christian should want to press further.  We want God to get more than a nod of approval.  We want people to love, worship, and serve God as Savior and Lord.  

With that, what could be objectionable about the content of “I Can Feel Him in the Morning”?  First, I don’t want to disparage the guys who wrote this song or the people who enjoy this song.  This song provides an opportunity to talk about what it means to know God in a more real and biblically grounded way.  Now, about the song.  This song puts forth a post-modern form of spirituality that grounds the truth of God’s existence in feeling.  A cursory perusal of the content of Grand Funk Railroad’s songs shows that band values God in some way.  But, writing during the cusp of postmodernism’s upsurge, the band sings about faith in terms of, “whatever’s good for you is true for you.” 

OK, so Grand Funk Railroad’s nod of approval may be a little wishy-washy and post-modern; but, well grounded Evangelical Christians don’t harbor such thoughts . . . do they?  Well, perhaps in a worship service you have sung Alfed H. Ackley’s song “I Serve a Risen Savior” otherwise know as “I Know He Lives.” The song claims that “whatever men may say” we can know God lives because we experience him in our heart:

“He lives, he lives, Christ Jesus lives today!

He walks with me and talks with me

Along life’s narrow way

He live, he lives, salvation to impart!

You ask me how I know he lives.

He lives within my heart.”

This song is infused with a Kantian philosophy that has penetrated the Protestant Christian thinking.  During the Enlightenment period, in response to raging critiques of the Bible and Christianity, Emmanuel Kant created a dichotomy between the spiritual and the material world.  Kant argued that the truth of the Christian faith can only be apprehended by the experience of the believer, thus separating faith from objective truth.  For Kant, faith is a matter of personal experience and feeling, and it has nothing to do with reasonable rational arguments rooted in objectivity.  If you were to have asked Kant how he knows Jesus lives, he may have answered, “I know he lives because he is a subjective feeling that I experience deep within my heart.”  Ultimatly, Kant was trying to rescue Christianity from critique.  However, Christianity doesn't need to be rescued from critique; it can stand up in the face of critique just fine (c.f. "The reason for God" by Tim Keller and "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis).

We have a couple problems at this point.  (1) What happens when we simply just don’t “feel it”?  And, (2) what happens when someone else has deep feelings for an errant belief system? 

First, all Christians will go through times when we don’t really feel the truth of the Christian faith.  We all have times of spiritual dryness and weariness when God seems to be absent “along life’s narrow way.”  At those dry weary times, we need a knowledge of God that surpasses the vacillating subjective feelings of the human heart; this is when we are to stand upon the Word of God apart from our feelings.  I recently heard Dr. R. Scott Clark point out that events like the call of Abram and the Exodus aren’t experiences we feeling in our hearts, they are a real historical events that are recorded in Scripture.  Jesus’ birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension aren’t true because we feel them to be true, they are objective truths revealed to us in Scripture.  Upon these truths we are called to believe; we are not called to feel them.  When we feel strong in the faith, the truths of salvation remain true apart from our feelings.  More encouraging, when we hardly feel the faith to be true, the truths of salvation remain true apart from our feelings.  God’s Word is perfect – God’s word is truth (Pr 30:5, Jn 17:17). Such truth is a solid anchor against the emotional squalls of the human heart.  Such truth is a firm foundation against the ever shifting sands of culture.

Second, what is a Christian to do when someone from another faith expressed deep hearty feelings for their religion (especially when that Christian doesn’t feel so good about his or her faith)?  Feelings have become the apologetic de jour in America.  The Buddhist might say, “Yoga just makes me feel more at peace, more centered.”  The new age astrologer may say, “I experience so much peace through transcendental meditation.”  The Unitarian Universalist might quip, “I feel some much more tolerance and acceptance now that I’ve shed the straight jacket of dogmatic belief.” The Mormon bicycle boys who come knocking on your door will surly say, “I’ve been convince by a burning in my bosom/heart.”  Remember Ackley’s hymn lyrics, “You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart.”  To butcher an old cliché, what’s good for the Christian is good for the gander.  But, in a world full of people with divergent religious beliefs based upon feelings, not everyone’s feelings can be right.  If I feel that God is a personal being and you feel that god is an impersonal force, what are we to do? 

Do many people feel that God is real?  Yes.  Do many Christians feel that the God of the Bible is real? Yes.  Do Christians experience uplifting worship services? Yes.  But, don’t relegate belief to the arena of feelings, emotions, and experiences.  There will be times when feelings fail, emotions run dry, and experiences are almost non-existent.  When these times come, we need something more; we need an objective source of truth that resides outside of us – the Word of God. 

So, the next time you trip over a song like “I Can Feel Him in the Morning” by Grand Funk Railroad on the radio, see it as an opportunity to gently press deeper questions about the existence of God. 

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