Secular music compatible with Christian world view

For those of you that enjoy secular music, here's an opputunity to show why. If it's okay with the forum moderaters I'd like to devote this thread to the lyrics of music which do not come from a Christian source but still convey basic or even deep truths about life. My intention is to demonstrate that secular music (especially rock) is not necessarily tied to a debaucherous lifestyle, or even as Aaron might put it, more subtle forms of sensuality.

I'll try to hold out from posting Bob Dylan for as long as possible

Here's a good one for starters. It's called "Ship of Fools".

We're setting sail
To the place on the map
From which no one has ever returned
Drawn by the promise of the joker and the fool
By the light of the crosses that burn
Drawn by the promise of the women and the lace
And the gold and the cotton and pearls
It's the place where they keep all the darkness you need
You sail away from the light of the world
On this trip, baby

You will pay tomorrow
You gonna pay tomorrow
You will pay tomorrow

CHORUS:
Save me
Save me from tomorrow
I don't want to sail in this ship of fools
Save me
Save me from tomorrow
I don't want to sail in this ship of fools

I want to run and hide
Right now...

Avarice and greed
Are gonna drive you over the endless sea
They will leave you drifting in the shallows
Or drowning in the oceans of history
Traveling the world
You're in search of no good
But I'm sure you'll build your Sodom
Like you knew you would
Using all the good people
For your galley slaves
As your little boat struggles
Through the warning waves

But you don't pay
You will pay tomorrow
You gonna pay tomorrow
You gonna pay tomorrow

(CHORUS)

Where's it coming from?
Where's it going to?
It's just a ship of fools...

Here we go...
All aboard...

 

I had some 10,000 Maniacs on today. I know alot of people don't care for Natalie Merchant's narrative story telling style, but I think that was their whole appeal. In any case, this song is for all who know what it feels like debating someone whose premise is that sound waves arranged in a particular fashion are inherently evil. It's called "Headstrong"

To your common sense firm arguments
I won't listen to your voice of reason trying to change my mind.
I mind my feelings and not your words.
Didn't you notice I'm so headstrong even when I know I'm wrong?
Take this to your heart and into your head now:
Before you waste your time, call a truce and call a draw.

What's the use in mapping your views out in orderly form
When it does nothing but confuse and anger me more?
I mind my feelings and not your words.
Didn't you notice I'm so headstrong.
You're talking to a deaf stone wall.
Take this to your heart and into your head now:
The old wives' tale is true, I'll repeat it.
All is fair in love and war, that's how the famous saying goes.

Open up your eyes, see me for what I am:
Cast in iron, I won't break and I won't bend.
Take this to your heart and into your head now:
The old wives' tale is true, I'll repeat it.
All is fair in love and war, that's how the famous saying goes.

If I told you we were out to sea in a bottomless boat,
You'd try anything to save us, you'd try anything to keep us afloat.
And if we were living in a house afire,
I don't believe that you could rush out and escape it and not rescue me.
Take this to your heart and into your head now:
The old wives' tale is true, I'll repeat it.
All is fair in love and war, that's how the famous saying goes.
Listen, I think they were talking to you.

 

Tonite's addition is a song that only the Amish could be unfamiliar with. Two versions were recorded, one acoustic and one which guitars and drums kick in after the first verse. I prefer the light rock version. So here you go, one of the best songs ever written about people's innability to communicate. It's called "The Sounds of Silence"

Hello darkness, my old friend,
I’ve come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left it’s seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
’neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence.

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dare
Disturb the sound of silence.

"fools" said I, "you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you."
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed
In the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon God they made.
And the sign flashed out it’s warning,
In the words that it was forming.
And the sign said, "the words of the prophets

Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls."
And whisper’d in the sounds of silence.

 

There's a deeper message to this song than simple despair and hoplessness. Take a look at the way the street lamp and the cobble stone street are suddnely juxtaposed with the neon light. The author is having a vision of the future. This is made clear in the end when he says "the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls". What Paul Simon is saying is that our great society with all of it's modern conveniences is actually isolating the individual from humanity, not bringing him closer.

There is no place on earth one can feel more alone than in a huge city like New York. I think this song is primarily illustrating that irony, and I agree with it.

While we're on the subject of hoplessness and despair, here's a nice little rocker from Neil Young about the homeless called "Rockin' in the Free World"

There’s colors on the street
Red, white and blue
People shufflin’ their feet
People sleepin’ in their shoes
But there’s a warnin’ sign on the road ahead
There’s a lot of people sayin’ we’d be better off dead
Don’t feel like satan, but I am to them
So I try to forget it, any way I can.

Keep on rockin’ in the free world (x4)

I see a woman in the night
With a baby in her hand
Under an old street light
Near a garbage can
Now she puts the kid away, and she’s gone to get a hit
She hates her life, and what she’s done to it
There’s one more kid that will never go to school
Never get to fall in love, never get to be cool.

Keep on rockin’ in the free world (x4)

We got a thousand points of light
For the homeless man
We got a kinder, gentler,
Machine gun hand
We got department stores and toilet paper
Got styrofoam boxes for the ozone layer
Got a man of the people, says keep hope alive
Got fuel to burn, got roads to drive.

Keep on rockin’ in the free world (x4)

 

I just wanted to add, I don't believe music has to have a message of hope to it, life isn't always like that, and art is meant to be an expression of life experience. What music should do is inspire the listener to think, and I believe a song like "The Sound of Silence" does just that.

When I think of hopelessness and despair, one of the first songs that comes to mind is Billy Joel's "Piano Man". Now there is a song which fits your description perfectly. Not only is it hopeless, it leaves absolutely no room for hope, therefore the listener has no choice but to wallow in doubt and self loathing.

On to more thought inspiring music. It's time for some Dylan. This might be my favorite song of his, then again it might not. On 1965's "Bringing It All Back Home" it's strictly acoustic with a single hamonica note to punctuate the end of each verse, but there are band accompanied versions of it. "It's Alright Ma (I'm only Bleeding)" should give you a good idea as to just why Dylan has recieved honorary degrees from schools like Harvard and Yale, as well as having college courses devoted to the study of his music.


Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool's gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying.

Temptation's page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover
That you'd just be
One more person crying.

So don't fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It's alright, Ma, I'm only sighing.

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don't hate nothing at all
Except hatred.

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.

An' though the rules of the road have been lodged
It's only people's games that you got to dodge
And it's alright, Ma, I can make it.

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you're the one
That can do what's never been done
That can win what's never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks
They really found you.

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not fergit
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to.

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him.

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in.

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, Ma, if I can't please him.

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony.

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer's pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death's honesty
Won't fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes
Must get lonely.

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.

 

Anyone familiar with The Kinks? I just recently started getting into them. So far I've got "Something Else By The Kinks" and "The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society". Does anyone know of other music that sounds like this or with this subject matter (kind of an examination and celebration of middle class life)?


Anyway I'm really loving these guys, I'm gonna hafta pick some more of their stuff up.

People Take Pictures

People take pictures of the Summer,
Just in case someone thought they had missed it,
And to proved that it really existed.
Fathers take pictures of the mothers,
And the sisters take pictures of brothers,
Just to show that they love one another.

You can't picture love that you took from me,
When we were young and the world was free.
Pictures of things as they used to be,
Don't show me no more, please.

People take pictures of each other,
Just to prove that they really existed,
Just to prove that they really existed.
People take pictures of each other,
And the moment to last them for ever,
Of the time when they mattered to someone.

People take pictures of the Summer,
Just in case someone thought they had missed it,
Just to proved that it really existed.
People take pictures of each other,
And the moment to last them for ever,
Of the time when they mattered to someone.
Picture of me when I was just three,
Sucking my thumb by the old oak tree.
Oh how I love things as they used to be,
Don't show me no more, please.