[UNKNOWN]: you
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to the Unison Church podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am excited for this episode, but I am also a little nervous because the topic is a little sensitive and so I'm excited to talk about it though.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been doing a lot of interviews lately and I've been recording and editing those.
[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't even had some that I'm working on now and so I'm excited to get those to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the coming episodes, however, today we're going to do something a little bit different because I just really got captivated by this recently.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I wanted to bring you guys an episode about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I wanted to think about it kind of think out loud a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is going to be a very different episode than what we've had in the past.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I hope you guys will enjoy it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I want to just warn you upfront.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a little bit sensitive of a topic.
[SPEAKER_00]: So keep that in mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm excited for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So those of you guys that know me or that follow me online even know that I'm a huge fan of music and I my degrees actually in music.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a degree in music composition and technology and you may know this that my favorite thing to do with relevance to music is to write and produce music.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is something that I just, yeah, I always like it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like writing songs.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like writing my degrees in classical composition.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like film score.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like all kinds of different things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I love to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a business called the Unison Studios.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm actually in it right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm in the podcast studio as we speak.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of my time lately has been spent on getting that business up and running, which means I haven't been writing as much as I like to.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm feeling a lot like pent up creative energy and so I think that's part of why I think that's part of why this song that we're going to talk about today really jumped out at me and hit me so hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm a big fan of emo music which is a broad genre or even just
[SPEAKER_00]: descriptor of music that allows a lot of different kinds of music that I like to fall into that category and so you know people will like disagree on what isn't is not emo and I'm not really into that I just I can I can feel it when people write things and sometimes the lyrical thing oftentimes is stylistic thing and so
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so very into that into punk into, um, emo hardcore like all of you know, those kinds of genres.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of emo like indie stuff as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just love, I love listening to that because it's very real is very transparent.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, if people ask me what kind of music I write, I shouldn't say.
[SPEAKER_00]: I usually say emo that's usually my go-to.
[SPEAKER_00]: For that, and I'm working on an album that's pretty, pretty emo.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pretty emo, so a lot of stuff have been performing last two years, too, has been very much that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've struggled to find sort of like a genre that I think describes on music.
[SPEAKER_00]: that I want to write into as well like like there's so many different ways to grow musically and and I feel like now I'm sort of growing into this genre more than anything else and so anyway I'm excited to share a little bit of that music that I listen to on a regular basis today but again I want to just again note that it's kind of kind of heavy
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so I have been listening to him always listening to in the background This is one of the the bands and artists that I just follow a lot and so I'm a huge fan and if you were into emo music at all, you're aware of the band Paramore
[SPEAKER_00]: Paramore is an insanely seminal band to the punk specifically pop punk genre and many people have sort of fallen off of the paramour train recently because it's sort of as they progress and this is off in the case with artists and what I would call underground genres they often become like more and more poppy as they get older
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if I could say pop is a good word that describes them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to go more with like an indie if anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: It would be like an indie pop maybe.
[SPEAKER_00]: Terminology for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like they really do have a very like a post.
[SPEAKER_00]: emo, I guess, and post punk kind of sound to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's it's it's it's it's it's still very like punk and hardcore influenced, but it's much more like clean and I think especially Haley Williams, the lead singer of Paramore, who I lovingly refer to as the goddess of punk.
[SPEAKER_00]: She has come out with now three works that are solo two of them were like albums albums.
[SPEAKER_00]: This this most recent one that has come out this year is a group of singles that she's sort of collecting into like a physical playlist, but it's really become like a group of singles and Haley Williams music specifically if you want to call something pop I got you suppose her music would be that although it's still weird like her music is weird which doesn't quite fit into what you would think of us as pop you know
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so yeah, I really enjoy, I mean, I really enjoy Paramores music a lot and Haley William stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really like it as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the things I love about this music is it is so transparent and vulnerable and it's so into the nitty gritty of like what's going on in her head and so
[SPEAKER_00]: Haley Williams has said that her solo music was actually a suggestion from a therapist to say, hey, you're dealing with this stuff and the way that you know how to deal with things is to write about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you've been doing your whole life.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's been doing Paramore since she was a kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: in her teen years.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, so she was kind of told by like therapists to write music.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was like, you got to write, you got to deal with these sort of like emotions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so her first two albums were very much like her processing through.
[SPEAKER_00]: Past traumas and moving on becoming healthier, struggling with mental health with depression specifically and among other things and she sort of writes these songs as a coping mechanism for dealing with that, which I think every artist can deal with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can all get behind that we write music to cope with things that happen in our life and it becomes an outlet not only to create something but also to kind of sift through some of the thinking that we're doing at that time and that's absolutely true with every songwriter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Haley Williams is an incredible songwriter.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's been writing really great music for Paramore like I said since she was a kid and now this music is also incredible although it is and this is again her words if you go and listen to interviews with her and stuff she will say this music is significantly more simple than Paramore's music and that's kind of on purpose because this was to be kind of raw and very
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, it's raw and it's very focused on the words.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's not like musically speaking, there's not necessarily a good ton going on, although I would say it's rather sophisticated still and it's very interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think interesting is probably the best the best word for the music.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's quite good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, Haley Williams, her voice is just
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh, Haley Williams voice is unparalleled in my opinion.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think there's anybody that sings like her.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are people that sing really good and very skilled.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as far as people that sing, you know, with the type of singing that Haley Williams does, I don't think there's anybody that comes close to her vocals.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're absolutely fantastic.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like I said, her words are really good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me give a slight other background before we listen to the song.
[SPEAKER_00]: Haley Williams started Paramore as a sort of quote-unquote Christian outfit, all the original members of Paramore, all Christians, they grew up in church, that whole thing, she grew up in the south, and so which we'll hear more about after we listen to the song.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think it's really interesting that
[SPEAKER_00]: To see artists who have faith walk through, you know, stardom and all that, and she got incredibly famous, you know, Paramores, like kind of a household name, even outside a punk.
[SPEAKER_00]: They just toured on Taylor Swift's Aeros tour, but not in the United States.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the European version, so we didn't get to see, I would love to see that show.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's interesting to watch these people grow and if you're, you know, students of their music, you listen to them grappling with it and she has written a lot about her faith, although Paramore was never intended to be like a Christian band in the sense that this is on a Christian music label for Christian radio.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was always a band that was supposed to be like a punk band and they were Christians and wrote about.
[SPEAKER_00]: wrote about God, sometimes in some vague terms, but there's some beautiful, beautiful music that Paramore has made.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I find that music from artists like these is oftentimes a little bit more
[SPEAKER_00]: relatable and accurate in describing what it is to grapple with your faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: The words are deep and they're not trying to like please a church audience and so they're able to say things that artists that are Christians don't often get to say and so beautiful beautiful music.
[SPEAKER_00]: This song is one such song Haley Williams at this point in her life.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I don't want to go too far into saying like, oh, is she like still in her faith that she still believed that she still like love Jesus, does she still, you know, she like, you know, going to church somewhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, a lot of people want to dissect and say like, oh, is this person like a Christian?
[SPEAKER_00]: and they want to like label people.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not really into that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not mind to decide.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's only Jesus can make the distinction on who is and is not in his kingdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not here to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not here to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I am here to talk about is this song.
[SPEAKER_00]: True Believer, which she released on July, twenty-eighth, two thousand twenty-five.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's very new.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very new.
[SPEAKER_00]: The cover of the album is sort of like a side profile of her face with an upside down cross in yellow sort of embossed on the front of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's something about there's something right away about that that obviously it has connotations to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you click on and listen to the song and you hear you hear some really interesting really interesting things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I would say at this point in her life one thing that I've noticed about Haley Williams is that she's very she's very into standing up for
[SPEAKER_00]: like a oppressed people, like minorities.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's very vocal about her support for racial minorities, her support for sex and gender minorities as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, that sits differently with different groups of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so she's been part of a lot of like pride rallies and things like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's been very vocal about those those things and she's also been very vocal about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, racial inequality and so you're gonna hear a lot of that in this song.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's go ahead and listen to this song and then I just want to walk through it and talk about some of these things, talk about some resonances with scripture and go from there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Haley Williams, True Believer.
[SPEAKER_01]: To rest on both down broad wake on Berlin keeps claiming bodies.
[SPEAKER_01]: All of best memories were bought and then turned into apartments.
[SPEAKER_01]: The club with all the hardcore shows, not just a great-scale domino, the churches overflow each Sunday greeting.
[SPEAKER_01]: You still love your ghost, I'll re-even your bones with my believe.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm the one who still loves your ghost, I'll re-even your bones because I'm a true man.
[SPEAKER_01]: they put up chain link fences underneath the biggest bridges they pose in Christmas cards with guns as big as all the children they say that Jesus is the way but then they gave him a white face so they don't have to pray to someone they didn't listen to them
[SPEAKER_01]: Till it's paid for every sin.
[SPEAKER_01]: Straight through the hard bargain.
[SPEAKER_01]: Till the roots of their Gotham, I'm one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Still wild, dear goats, every enemy, your bones with my blade.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm the one who still loves your ghost.
[SPEAKER_01]: I re-animate your bones.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a true baby.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm the one who still loves your ghost.
[SPEAKER_01]: I re-animate your bones.
[SPEAKER_01]: I still love your ghost I really hate your bones because so much
[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this song is really haunting, like even even the sort of like this droning like piano, big reverb, lead line is just like haunting.
[SPEAKER_00]: And musically speaking, I mean, the drums just absolutely make this song.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so, oh my gosh, it's so good.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the background vocals as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would say that's a thing on this.
[SPEAKER_00]: body of work, like I said, it wasn't quite an album all the stuff that came out in twenty twenty five, it's more of like a group of singles that I think she will release some kind of album for them, but they're not necessarily like her intent wasn't necessarily making album, but
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, yeah, the background vocals on these tracks are just absolutely fantastic.
[SPEAKER_00]: She gets to do a lot vocally and there's a lot of like very haily William stuff going on beneath the surface of the melody.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, as far as musically, it's a simple song, but it's so good.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very poignant, musically speaking, it's really good.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this isn't a music podcast, this is a theology podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: I won't bore you guys with the details of all the things that are going on musically in the song, you know, somebody else can do that or maybe I can do that on a different platform.
[SPEAKER_00]: But let's talk about these lyrics because they are wow, they are wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's put it that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have
[SPEAKER_00]: Dueling, so she hasn't come out and said exactly what the song is about, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a level of like, this is my interpretation and so take it for what it's worth.
[SPEAKER_00]: That, you know, you have to take it with a grain of salt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just the way it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are two like major themes here and I can't sometimes decide which lyric is about which thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of them is about where Haley Williams is from.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Haley Williams born in Meridian, Mississippi.
[SPEAKER_00]: She kind of like flees of this kind of toxic marriage that her mom is in her mom and her flee to this place in Franklin, Tennessee, which there's going to be a lyric that refers to that soon.
[SPEAKER_00]: And right now she lives in Nashville.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she's born and raised in the south, and that's important to what's going on in the song.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of the lyrics of the song have to do very much with that strip of land, you know, sort of like the Bible belt.
[SPEAKER_00]: of, you know, Southern America.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's a lot of references to that in the song that I'll try to draw out.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other one is about, I think, her, her faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what she, I think, would describe as the hypocrisy.
[SPEAKER_00]: of I'm going to be a little bit less sweeping with with my terminology here, but I'm going to point out some things about that later, but I'm going to say she is she is critiquing a certain form of Southern Evangelicalism.
[SPEAKER_00]: And specifically, the brands of that that are either or both greedy and or racist.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's what she's trying to describe here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're going to talk about those those different things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so
[SPEAKER_00]: The each verse of the song has a very specific thing there, and then she's got this claim that she makes in the chorus, which is really the claim that she makes in the chorus is what hit me, but the verses are the most sort of like cryptic, and when you got to kind of unpack with her up.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, let's start first one, first one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tourists stumbled down Broadway, Comberland keeps claiming bodies.
[SPEAKER_00]: All our best memories were bought and then turned into apartments.
[SPEAKER_00]: The club with all the hardcore shows, now just a gray-scale dominoes.
[SPEAKER_00]: The churches overflow each Sunday, greedy Sunday morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's sort of this pre-chorus line of, give shop in the lobby, act like God ain't watching.
[SPEAKER_00]: Man, Agilegate Wanching serves as the transitional statement into the chorus, as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we'll get to that in a second.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we got sort of like this, this initial thing, we're setting up, she's getting nostalgic about where she lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: Taurus stumbled down Broadway, Cumberlink keeps claiming bodies, all our best memories were bought and then turned into apartments.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's such an evocative phrase.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's not necessarily like a ton of,
[SPEAKER_00]: Theology going on in these, theology slash philosophy, but it's so evocative to think about like going back to where you are and seeing memories and seeing buildings that aren't what they used to be anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's sort of like the first feel of this song is that like, you know, tourists come to my town, they don't know what it used to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you look and it's like all these places where we had memories, like these hardcore shows, they're just great skill dominoes now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'd imagine she's probably being really specific.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're probably literally as a building in Tennessee that was a hardcore club or whatever that got turned into governor's.
[SPEAKER_00]: I bet.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then she kind of breaks that thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: She gets us like nostalgic for where she's from, breaks it with this line.
[SPEAKER_00]: The churches overflow each Sunday, greedy Sunday morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think what's going on there is like she's struck by how little changes there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then notices that like the churches are all still there though.
[SPEAKER_00]: The church's overflow each Sunday, greedy Sunday morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're from the New England where I live, you may not have a very experienced what she's referring to.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you take a plane, so my experience, my father's from Dallas, and so I don't live in the South, but I have spent time in the South in Texas.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, I was just there earlier this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as soon as you get off the plane, and you drive into Dallas, you notice, actually not even what you don't even have to get off the plane, you can look out the window.
[SPEAKER_00]: as the plane is landing in Dallas, Fort Worth and see these giant campest mega churches.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not saying that every giant church is a bad church.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not what I'm going for here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not trying to say that myself, although perhaps that's something Hayley Williams might say, but she is commenting that and there are some that these giant churches with huge property and massive budgets
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a result of greed sometimes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, and that's, so that's like it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's like, this is what she's getting out here.
[SPEAKER_00]: The church is overflow each Sunday, greedy Sunday morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, there's not a lot of nuance in this song.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of my biggest critiques of the song is that there's not nuance really in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I want to be careful to be nuanced.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I also want to acknowledge that she is exposing something very real.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I love this line.
[SPEAKER_00]: Give shop in the lobby.
[SPEAKER_00]: Act like God ain't watching.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's so good.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have, you know, if you're a Jesus guy, listening to this, you know, I'm a Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a Jesus guy, like I follow Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think what he says is really important.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we should shape our lives around it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not saying that every church that ever sells anything is wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess I'm saying, but there is a way to do church.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is like for profit and there are there are people that lead churches that have a lot more money than they should have and not only is that something that's a reality from an insider perspective.
[SPEAKER_00]: Other people in the culture have noticed that I've had conversations with people.
[SPEAKER_00]: where they've mentioned like, oh, you know, like, pastors that have, you know, three private jets to get through all their speaking engagement.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there was that like big critique of some preachers with their sneakers that were like worth thousands of dollars.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was like a big thing that happened a few years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a very real thing that in certain parts of the continent, I really, it's our for me to imagine it being a thing where I live in Connecticut.
[SPEAKER_00]: away from the Bible tell it's hard to imagine somebody being like I want to make a lot of money let me go start a church um it's like not the way to make money here I feel I don't think anyway I mean not that that's maybe that is still happening in certain places but I mean if you go to if you step foot in the south and you see some of this churches and you see people and how it's still a cultural norm for them for norm like you know not even just like
[SPEAKER_00]: big Jesus followers, but even just like your average kind of everyday person, it's in their culture to go to church often.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you say, like, there are people that get into church work.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't even call it ministry that get into church work in order to make money.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a real thing that happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she's critiquing that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's, I think that's really good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, I think it's a good critique.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so we continue kind of into this like pre-chorus, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Give shop in the lobby.
[SPEAKER_00]: Act like God ain't watching.
[SPEAKER_00]: Kill the soul.
[SPEAKER_00]: Turn up profit.
[SPEAKER_00]: What lives on?
[SPEAKER_00]: Southern Gotham.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's other Gotham like hit me because I'm also a big nerd.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I love Batman.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was wondering like, well, it's kind of random that she's like Gotham.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, Gotham is an evocative like philosophically, it's an evocative thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I was interested to see why she was doing that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I did some Googling around.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it turns out in Tennessee where she lives in Nashville, there's a skyscraper with these two like
[SPEAKER_00]: they look like Batman ears on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so people have drawn a correlation, like they've called, they've called Nashville Gotham before, because of the, they call it the Batman skyscraper.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's really interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, actually I got to kill the soul, turn a prophet, what lives on Southern Gotham.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's really leaning into that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Gotham is like completely debatrous.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like that's the whole point.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gotham is like the absurd city.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the place where,
[SPEAKER_00]: Only evil is is present Batman and his his family is kind of like the the lone Protectors, you know who against this city.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just against them, you know, that's kind of the idea and So she's saying you know this greeting is greedy like church culture kills people
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm gonna echo that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's right.
[SPEAKER_00]: A church that is about money.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus says you cannot serve both.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't serve two masters.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're gonna hate one and cling to the other.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't serve both God and money.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a church that is serving money can't be serving God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's dooming it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's dooming it's congregation.
[SPEAKER_00]: to the opposite of what Jesus came to bring, which is life, because money does not bring life.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, Jesus again says that they're rid of all evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, all this stuff is very, very evocative.
[SPEAKER_00]: Kill the soul, turn them profit.
[SPEAKER_00]: What lives on Southern Gotham, the observed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we get our first chorus.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm the one who still loves your ghost.
[SPEAKER_00]: I re-enimate your bones with my belief.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm the one who still loves your ghost.
[SPEAKER_00]: I re-animate your bones because I'm a true believer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is where I'm interested.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is she a true believer in?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what's she referring to?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is she saying, like, I'm a true believer?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I still, like, I believe in the real Jesus who is like not greedy and racist or is it like I'm a true believer?
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe in what like Tennessee can be.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't, you know, the people that are not like Christian voices that are commenting on this song tend to be like, this is about your home.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you believe in your home.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm actually leaning towards Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's talking about Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, I still believe in God in a Jesus who loves people who cares about the oppressed.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I believe in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I like I'm the one who loves your ghost.
[SPEAKER_00]: I reanimate your bones with my belief.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wonder even if she's saying, I love the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want the church to be thriving, but not your version of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not this greedy version that you're putting forward here.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is not what I love.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love what you stand for.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe even you used to be, but I don't know when she thinks that is with the ghost.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or she could even be talking about the Holy Spirit here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm the one who loves your ghost.
[SPEAKER_00]: Could even be that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Could even be like, I love God.
[SPEAKER_00]: I reanimate your bones with my belief.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm the one who still loves your ghosts.
[SPEAKER_00]: I reanimate it because I'm a true believer.
[SPEAKER_00]: So whatever she is, she's kind of sort of seeing herself.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a hypocritical version.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like this version that has sort of co-opted Christianity and then acts like it's not true.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like to be greedy is to act like what Jesus said is not true.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's a biblical statement.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, but I'm a true believer.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she's drawing a distinction with herself.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's saying, I'm still, I can still get behind.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can still get behind this.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, it doesn't seem like you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: powerful, really powerful, really powerful, but it gets, it gets crazier in verse two.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse two is wild.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this I think is what resonate with me because it's something I say.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the lines is something I say.
[SPEAKER_00]: They put up chain link fences underneath the biggest bridges.
[SPEAKER_00]: They pose in Christmas cards with guns as big as all their children.
[SPEAKER_00]: They say that Jesus is the way, but then they gave him a white face, so they don't have to pray to someone they deem lesser than them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to go with, I mean, she's talking about, there's a thing here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think what she's, what she's thinking of as they is sort of these false prophets, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: These these false teachers.
[SPEAKER_00]: who in her eyes have sort of co-opted the church or Christianity as a whole into something that's different than what it should be, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because she's sort of the true believer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then these are, there are these false believers, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: These, the, the scriptures would use false teacher, false prophet, the New Testament.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a problem that was in the early church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is what kind of like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this is what kind of describes these people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we can really, I mean, you can think of actual pictures on social media in the news that you've seen when she sings each of these lines.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they put up chain link fences underneath the biggest bridges.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a false teacher in her view is someone who's divisive, right, who's making a lot of us and thems, which is going to get into more in a second.
[SPEAKER_00]: They pose in Christmas cards with guns as big as all their children.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whoa.
[SPEAKER_00]: The thing is is that I have seen these pictures.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it does kind of take me back.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not going to get into like the politics of gun control and all that stuff, you know, although I think it's something she would she would do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but, uh, yeah, they posing Christmas cards with guns as we got our children.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a false, a false, a false teacher right here, a false believer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I think she's trying to get out that they're violent.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, that there, there's violence there.
[SPEAKER_00]: They say that Jesus is the way, but then they gave Him a white face, is the peace that resonates with me a lot, because something that I say in my ministry constantly is I'm always like down.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm always trying to knock down this image of white Jesus, specifically white Italian Jesus, and I live in a town
[SPEAKER_00]: That is pretty Italian and also my my I'm a kind of a mutt when it comes to like ethnicity but but technically the predominant You know the thing that I am the most of I'm only a quarter of it is Italian and so I often have said like look guys Jesus he's not white he's not Italian
[SPEAKER_00]: He's Middle Eastern and he's native Middle Eastern.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there are Middle Eastern countries that have been formed out of European immigrants and that's, you know, ancient Israel is not one of those countries.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are native Middle Easterners.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus was not what we would consider to be white.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not even a huge fan of that distinction, white.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not, you know, that's a somewhat new concept.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't have been around when Jesus was walking the earth, you know, their would have been a little bit more nuanced than that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But again, okay, they say that Jesus is the way, but then they give him a white face, so they don't have to pray to someone they deem lesser than them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh, I do think the whitening of Jesus is a power play by the people who were grasping for that power.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we see that a lot in the, you know, sort of like Cyrus, the great Roman Catholic.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying that's what it has to be now, but I'm saying that back then there was a state church
[SPEAKER_00]: That was grasping for power.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that was the same as like the Pharisees, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: The Pharisees were the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were a state religion.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was sort of grasping for power.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so what do they do with Jesus is they colored him in differently?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, all of the evidence, like it's not up for debate that Jesus was not white.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like nobody, that's a serious scholar, thinks that Jesus was white.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I mean, I dispel that, right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So these paintings and stuff that you see of white Jesus are because the people in power painted those paintings to make Jesus look like them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did they exactly mean that by them?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, like, like, um, you know, these these artists in the Renaissance, did they did they mean to malevolence by that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, probably not.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, there was probably a tradition that led to their thinking that's what Jesus actually looked like, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not all like malevolent, but how it starts is this co-opting of religion for the means of gaining power.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a big deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: And honestly, we have a history of that here in America, which is what she's going to get into in the pre-chorus here, which I think is where it gets really serious.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so here it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: She says, the South will not rise again till it's paid for every sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Strange fruit, hard bargain, till the roots southern Gotham.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's some stuff going on here, guys.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's some stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll be honest, I did not pick up on all of the things right away.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had to do some digging into what she's talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: It kind of makes me like a little sad that I didn't actually know this stuff already.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, let's jump into it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The South will not rise again.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a catchphrase used by the South and it's actually the South will rise again.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a catchphrase used by the by certain like Southern media outlets after the Civil War.
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea was that you will get back to where what we had before.
[SPEAKER_00]: which is primarily talk again and be talking you know there's a big like money piece here again again it's not just like purely malevolent racism although that is certainly the tool that they're using to get said money so she's like the south will not rise again till it's paid for every sin yeah i don't exactly know what what precisely she would envision said payment being but
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but it's in a bucket of line for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then she says these two things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Strange fruit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hard bargain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which is really important.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, first of all, that's really evocative.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where's that coming from?
[SPEAKER_00]: At first, I thought it was like kind of a call back to the greed and the strange fruit being a scriptural thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll know them by their fruit, whether they're like a good tree or bad for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if a bad tree is not going to bear good fruit, a good tree is not going to bear bad fruit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Strange fruit means strange place.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I looked it up and I did some digging and it wasn't immediately available, but somebody on, I think it was like a Reddit thing pointed out to me or might have been like a TikTok, which I don't have and I'm kind of annoyed that all these song reactions are TikTok now and not like long-form video.
[SPEAKER_00]: But here we are, doing a long-form podcast about it, so whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: Strange fruit is a very famous song made by the artist Billy Holiday.
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... the song was so controversial that she was not able to like her current label that she was working on it wouldn't release it she was performing a live in clubs and stuff and they were like we can't do this one so she actually ended up going to an independent label to release her song strange fruit in nineteen thirty nine and the song it's a haunting absolutely haunting song and billy holidays voices
[SPEAKER_00]: perfect for that kind of tune to jazz song about lynching and the strange fruit in the song hanging from the magnolia tree are the bodies of black individuals who have been hung from this magnolia tree
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's strange fruit hanging from the tree.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's blood on the leaves and blood in the roots.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's sort of the lyrics of the song.
[SPEAKER_00]: And everybody's going to have, you know, differences of opinion when it comes to what do we do about racism that I think that nobody can deny what was going on in this time.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, Billie Holiday, in the nineteen thirty nine comes out with a song.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, just like the previous generation, even that generation, like even during that time, there are our black people being captured in hung from hills from trees during this time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like lynching is a very real thing going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was actually threatened by the government to stop singing this song because of how evocative and it was and it was causing problems.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: What a song.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would recommend a listen to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she sings that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's exactly what Haley Williams has in mind here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Strange route.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hard bargain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hard bargains are really interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Think too has a lot to do with where she's from.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she's, she lived in Franklin, Tennessee.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the town of Franklin, there's a small like subset of property called the Hard bargain.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the hard bargain neighborhood was formed by a freed slave who bought up this portion of land subdivided and sold it to other freed slaves as their first, you know, first home that they owned.
[SPEAKER_00]: And wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So strange fruit, hard bargain till the roots Southern Gotham.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she's talking about this stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, she's really getting into it.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's calling back to very specific things that happened in the history of where she's from.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think these are things that happened in history for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in the context of this song, I'm
[SPEAKER_00]: What exactly is she getting at here?
[SPEAKER_00]: She's going to sing the course again.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm the one who still loves your ghost.
[SPEAKER_00]: I reanimate your bones of my belief.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm the one who still loves your ghost.
[SPEAKER_00]: I reanimate your bones of my belief.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm the one who loves your ghost.
[SPEAKER_00]: I reanimate your bones because I'm a true believer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the song's yet to end.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in the context of the song, what she's talking about
[SPEAKER_00]: I think she's specifically referencing that in the South, this kind of stuff still happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, maybe not exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe there's not literally people being hung from trees.
[SPEAKER_00]: Although I wouldn't be surprised to hear that that happens in some fringe parts of the South.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I would say what she's referencing here is the South, particularly where she lives in her experience,
[SPEAKER_00]: has not quite come to grips and taking ownership of what have what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's still not a resolution.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's true.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there is not a resolution.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we saw that during like the COVID lockdowns.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's a serious thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we should be thinking about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know what that resolution is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not a way to care to try to guess what it should be.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think that's what she's talking about here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's something deeper, though, something about the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he's, I still do think the song is about the church, not just her town.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what does it mean that she's linking the church together with this kind of racism referenced by strange fruit, hard bargain?
[SPEAKER_00]: She mentions, to till the roots, which I think is powerful.
[SPEAKER_01]: They say that Jesus is the way, but then they gave him a white face So they don't have to pray to someone they didn't listen to them The South will not rise again Till it's paid for every sin
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so let's go to the key issue here.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got some really severe statements from Haley here that are basically statements condemning racism.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to draw something out here.
[SPEAKER_00]: We got to remember that she's from the South, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: She's living in the Bible Belt.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's condemning this brand of Southern Christianity that seems to be consumed with greed and seems to be complicit at least in racism, maybe even propagating it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is her words.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where she's sort of viewing this version of Southern Christianity.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's important to remember that this is what she is noticed in her context.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's grown up with this.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was raised in a conservative, independent, fundamental Baptist Church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I went to schools that would have met that description and I interact with people who went to churches like that as a kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not my context now.
[SPEAKER_00]: However,
[SPEAKER_00]: When it comes to critiquing things, that is often the first thing that I critique.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it because that thing is the worst?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it because independent fundamental churches are the worst churches out there?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I don't believe that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there are other brands of Christianity that are bad too.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that there's people that get it wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that there's some things about independent fundamental
[SPEAKER_00]: context that actually equipped me for what I'm doing now and that actually helped me in my walk with Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a mixed bag.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was mostly negative.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of the stuff that's unique to that brand of Christianity has a lot of negative stuff and I'm quick to condemn it and I'll quick to call people out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that was the context that I was raised in.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's important when you're listening to this song to realize that Haley Williams drew up in a particular context that she's now critiquing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as humans, we're often quick to critique what we're familiar with, especially if we've kind of deconstructed away from that in some way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, that's certainly true of mine, fundamentalism as a concept.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've deconstructed from.
[SPEAKER_00]: And therefore, I'm quick to critique it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think this kind of thing that she's singing about, she's seen it.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's experienced, come into contact with this greedy and racist qualities within Southern evangelicalism.
[SPEAKER_00]: Does that mean that that's the worst of the worst?
[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't mean that everything that they do is bad, not necessarily, but I don't even know if she wouldn't necessarily say that.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, she's quick to critique it because it's her context.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, also, severe subjects sometimes require severe tone.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to defend some of her language.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like when she says strange fruit, hard bargain till the roots Southern Gotham.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like that statement a lot, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Till the roots.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is something that should be uprooted.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, when it comes to racism specifically, which is what this second versus primarily about, I have a feeling that if we were to sit down with Hayes Williams and be like, what do we do about this?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what you would say, but I have a feeling that what she would say is different than what I would say.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have a feeling that what I would say is probably different than what you would say as the listener is a complicated issue.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we need to recognize that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so my one critique of this song, and I'm not even sure how much of a critique it is, there's not a lot of nuance here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's just a nature of writing music.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you sit down to write a song, especially like this, you know, the songs like not that long.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think it's just the nature of the beast.
[SPEAKER_00]: You got to make a point and new on sometimes is difficult when trying to make a point.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I like to think that maybe she would speak with nuance if she were to like directly address this in a conversational setting.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the song isn't all out condemnation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, I want to say severe topic, severe tone.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's important.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've taken similar things, especially when we're talking about premeditated speech, like for instance, for me, for a sermon.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I need to say something, I have intentional severity built into a manuscript so that I can think about everything ahead of time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't just read the manuscript when I get up there to preach, but I have manuscript and oftentimes I will actually use a more severe tone to my manuscript than I do when I actually go to preach and I'll scale it back a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: But sometimes you need severity when communicating severe concept.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the most severe concepts here is the reality that racism exists in the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: That the church has propagated and at least been complicit with racism.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a fact.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the church has a checkered, and I'm talking about the church in general.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm talking about your specific church.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not talking about my specific church.
[SPEAKER_00]: the church in general throughout history has a checkered past and in America specifically Southern churches often had a checkered past with reference to racism around the Civil War and prior to and after as well including in the in the the period of time where the song that she's referencing strange fruit you know we're talking nineteen thirty nine this is there's a lot of racism going on and some of it's even coming from the churches
[SPEAKER_00]: So I gotta acknowledge that.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a severe problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fast forward to today.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's twenty twenty five.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have very recent history of churches splitting, of people leaving churches, of people going to different churches because of their response to what?
[SPEAKER_00]: To the George Floyd racial unrest that was happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we've got like this, this is within five years of our history.
[SPEAKER_00]: During COVID lockdowns, we've got this big incident where there are not actually just one, but a couple killings of black individuals by the police, which sparks this huge, huge bout of unrest.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got people saying things on social media.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got protests.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got riots.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got politicians coming out, making this a ticket item.
[SPEAKER_00]: How are we going to deal with this racial inequality?
[SPEAKER_00]: This has been a thing in our very recent history that there still does exist in this country and all around the world, but in this country, at least some measure of racial inequality.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that that is denial.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that we can stand here and say that's not true.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we might be able to disagree about how to deal with that and we might build a disagree on to what extent that is.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the fact that it exists is true and here's the even more tragic fact.
[SPEAKER_00]: The even more tragic fact is that our churches have within their walls racism.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can speak from this personally because I know churches in the area and there were several of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: that either chose to remain silent about racial inequality, that speak from the pulpit in a way.
[SPEAKER_00]: that either doesn't acknowledge it or downplays or even take sides when it comes to racial inequality.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know individuals that left churches because of the way that they handled these conversations and I know a whole lot of churches that didn't even have the conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And our church is one where a very ethnically diverse church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we felt it necessary during this time to talk about racism.
[SPEAKER_00]: You actually heard some sermons that I gave at my church about racism because my sermon series on Jonah largely contained content about racism.
[SPEAKER_00]: I firmly believe that most of the New Testament letters are written to the church to combat racism.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe not racism exactly like we had here in America and the Deep South.
[SPEAKER_00]: But racism nonetheless ethnocentrism, partiality.
[SPEAKER_00]: These concepts are things that have existed for a very long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reality is, is that Jesus actually encountered those things in his very ministry.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's interesting here because I think when you think about this song, when you think about Southern Christianity, you know, you might, I think what she's, yeah, she doesn't come out and say this, but I think what she's critiquing specifically is what you might call like white Southern evangelicalism.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason for that is, well, there's a couple reasons for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Part of it is actually that some of these denominations in the South actually started because of their stance on slavery.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there are certain brands of evangelicalism that are very white dominated, mostly because of how they started, while there are others that may not be that may not be the case.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, there's plenty of black churches that are southern as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't think she's really necessarily condemning those, at least not in the second verse.
[SPEAKER_00]: So where am I going with this?
[SPEAKER_00]: What I'm saying is,
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got a bunch of white people in churches sitting in the pews.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've got racist opinions.
[SPEAKER_00]: The ironic thing about this, and this is all tied to her second verse of lyric, the ironic thing about it is, how can you be a white Christian, and then be racist when the Jesus whom you serve is not white?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a very real possibility that some of these white Christians, I'll use some air quotes there, would have been racist towards Jesus if they saw him and didn't know he was Jesus because Jesus wasn't white.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's where she gives, you know, they say that Jesus is the way, but then they gave him a white face.
[SPEAKER_00]: We talked about that already, but I think this is really serious.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think this is really serious.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is
[SPEAKER_00]: There are Christians who are just not in the know about this.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're just deluded.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Jesus that they believe in is not real.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Jesus that they believe in is somebody who simply enhances your way of life without causing you to make changes to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who agrees with all of your opinions, who votes in the same way as you.
[SPEAKER_00]: That Jesus is not real.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not claiming to say that I have perfect knowledge and that I have everything right in my pursuit of Jesus, but there's one thing that I can say, and that is that Jesus went out of his way to talk with minorities, to speak with the people who were outcasts.
[SPEAKER_00]: He spends time with sinners.
[SPEAKER_00]: He spends time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I say sinners, I don't mean because of their moral character.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean people who were kicked out of society in the context of that passage because of their allegiance to Rome.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he spends time with, maybe a better term, politically incorrect.
[SPEAKER_00]: He spends time with the opposing sides.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's got disciples on both sides of the herred debates of Rome.
[SPEAKER_00]: He spends time with women and he seeks them out and he calls them to be his disciples just like he calls them men.
[SPEAKER_00]: He spends time with Romans, the oppressive government.
[SPEAKER_00]: He spends time with Samaritans.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are all people who are invited into Jesus' family.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why it's, you know, in Galatians, Paul says, look, if you're adopted into the family of God, these fences that you put up to use Haley Williams, these chainlake fences that you put up in between each other, they don't exist anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're part of the family of God, then you are all co-ears with Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have the inheritance of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are sons and daughters of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is your primary identity.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when we see people whom we might be likely to other the first thing that we think of is, hey, you're a child of God, just like I am.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this sort of like false gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think you can be like, you know, we're all struggling with things, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying that everybody, Paul is Jesus has to be perfect on this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's room for people to be making strides, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: People come from a lot of different, this is where that this nuance comes in.
[SPEAKER_00]: People come from a lot of different contexts.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're raised in an ideology, it's not easy to leave that behind.
[SPEAKER_00]: I get that.
[SPEAKER_00]: People are on a journey.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't think that you can be a follower of Christ and not be on that journey.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think when you say that Jesus is Lord and you submit to His authority, you become a follower of Christ, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: When you make that call, you're choosing to follow a guy who is by the sort of, I don't love these contexts, but by the modern language is a brown man
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't say that you're following that and then not at least begin to dismantle your racism.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just don't think that works.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think those things are compatible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just like before when we said when when Jesus says, you can't serve two masters, you're going to hate one and clean to the other.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't serve both God and money.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that applies here to racism as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't follow a God who loves the oppressed, who makes space for the immigrant, who wants the poor to be fed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, who erases these walls that we put up between each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't say that you've followed that and then proceed to act nothing like him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's where we're getting on that song as a whole.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got to stop ranting about this.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just so powerful.
[SPEAKER_00]: The song is a whole, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Greed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse two, racism.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are two issues that that Haley Williams is seeing with, you know, this, I'm going to say this brand of Southern Evangelicalism.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I said, I don't know exactly where she's at.
[SPEAKER_00]: She might just be like the whole bag is messed up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when she says to the rude, she means this, the whole church needs to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: That might be where she is.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not where I am.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's space for the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: See my last podcast about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's broken, but it's still good and still needed in Jesus loves the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think there's some individual congregations that maybe could go.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to be the one to make the distinction on which shouldn't shouldn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not for me to decide, but I am saying I think there are some institutions that are causing more harm than good when it especially with reference to these two things because I think that she's right and I think that this is what artists do as we pull things out and we say things that people don't want to say and I think she's right.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are idols within evangelicalism and I'm saying the church as a whole is well, but what she's critiquing
[SPEAKER_00]: There are idols of greed and racism.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I agree with her when she says, till the roots, not that the whole church ago, but that we need to get rid of greed and racism, that greed and racism are incompatible vices with the virtues of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what is like, I think this is, we're in a return to regulations again.
[SPEAKER_00]: the fruit of the Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are the things that God is about.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are the things that God wants to cultivate in each of His followers.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's given us the Holy Spirit as a way to bring about these fruits, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: The good, the good tree bears the good fruit.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are the fruits of the Spirit, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Love joy, peace, long suffering, et cetera.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when we're talking about greed, when we're talking about racism,
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are fleshly vices.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what God desires to do is to replace those with love, generosity, justice, equality, right, long suffering, listening ears.
[SPEAKER_00]: God wants to take you and me who exist in churches, probably if you're listening this podcast,
[SPEAKER_00]: He wants us to be agents of the fruits of the spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wants us to show those off.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think the big context here is let greed and racism let those never be accurate descriptions of our church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let it be so that no one could look onto my church and say they're greedy, they're racist.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let it be that people can't make those accusations at me and have them be accurate.
[SPEAKER_00]: People are going to say whatever they're going to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: But let it be so that my life and my ministry is above reproach in such a way that greedy and racist are not words that I can be used to describe it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let it be so instead that love and generosity that those would be words I could describe my ministry.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I, and I pray the same for you guys.
[SPEAKER_00]: You were listening.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I, I like to think I don't like as I don't know, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Haley, it would be awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I don't know if somehow you're listening to this, come on my podcast and let's talk about this deeper.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't know necessarily that this is how she would approach this.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in my opinion, the church actually holds the solution to these problems.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I also understand that there are churches out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think there are large ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there may be numerous of them that have propagated these qualities.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm actually thankful.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm actually thankful for the song.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I do think the song, it's severe.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's designed to wake people up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I like to think that she would agree that this isn't Jesus, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a human problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus is grieved by this.
[SPEAKER_00]: The real true Jesus is grieved that these things exist, especially when coupled with his name.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I would like to sort of wrap up, which is this encouragement.
[SPEAKER_00]: You guys are in churches, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You have the ability to shape the culture of your church.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what is it that you can do?
[SPEAKER_00]: to avoid greed and racism, but more importantly, to cultivate love and generosity in your ministries.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you listen to a song like this, it's easy to get taken aback by the offensiveness of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is offensive.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's supposed to be offensive.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a severe tone for a severe topic.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's offensive, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of like in second Corinthians when Paul is like, hey, I wrote that letter to you and I heard some of y'all were grieved and I want to let you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want you to be like ungodly grieved, but I do want you to experience grief enough to cause you to grow.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I'm not necessarily comparing daily waves to the apostle Paul, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or a song to the inspired word of first Corinthians.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I am saying is that we can be offended in such a way that it leads us to growth.
[SPEAKER_00]: So don't turn it off.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're offended, turn it off.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how most people deal with stuff like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's offensive, turn it off.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, that's offensive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Think about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can it be set of you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it true of you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it true of your church?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it true of the people that go to church with you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, then what can you do about it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Get offended and get even angry, but the kind of anger that leads to progress, the kind of anger that causes you to press into Jesus and say, this is injustice.
[SPEAKER_00]: What can I do about it?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then do something about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It starts with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you be loving and generous instead of greedy and racist?
[SPEAKER_00]: What kind of things do you need to learn about?
[SPEAKER_00]: What kind of things do you need to listen to?
[SPEAKER_00]: What kind of intentional relationships do you need to form?
[SPEAKER_00]: And even ask the question, what kind of church do you have to be at?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's room for that question.
[SPEAKER_00]: In no way do I want this podcast to be, you should leave your church and find, you know, one that's just like mine, that's not what I mean.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are different churches for a different reason because there are different kinds of people and there are people that my church will never reach and that your church will reach.
[SPEAKER_00]: But at the same time, there are bad churches out there led by false teachers, led by false prophets.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes,
[SPEAKER_00]: Those guys just need to be kicked out, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what the new testament.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul's like, put these people away from you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Go let these people feel comfortable in your midst if they're false teachers and prophets.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're trying to co-opt your church, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's, you know, easier said than done depends on the context.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's maybe ways for there's room for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think that sometimes an institution is so corrupt.
[SPEAKER_00]: that you just have to walk away from it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think that's a real thing too.
[SPEAKER_00]: If greed and racism are words that do describe your church, get out of there, man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Get out of there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's not so that you've never heard me say that in the podcast before.
[SPEAKER_00]: But again, I think it's a viewer problem requires a severe tone.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've been, I've been marinating on the song for a while.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I've come to really enjoy it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm happy that it gave us an opportunity to talk about these things that are that I'm passionate about.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope I hope that I've been able to convey new wants to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: But also stir something up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope that people can be passionate about diversity and about justice.
[SPEAKER_00]: and about generosity and above all else about love.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I hope that's helped you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope this song is actually helpful to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I said, if you can move past the offensive nature, listen to the critique, take it's heart and cause it to propel you forward into Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like to think that that's actually her goal with the song as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And once again, I would love to, I would love to discuss that with her.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in absence of doing that, I can only speculate.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do believe when she says I'm a true believer that she believes that the Jesus that she knows and loves is someone who cares about people.
[SPEAKER_00]: who doesn't chase money, and who doesn't ostracize people, but instead invites them into union with him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not just union just fully, you know, accepting you can't change.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything you do is already good.
[SPEAKER_00]: You already know everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I think he accepts us.
[SPEAKER_00]: He accepts us into a union where he says, hey, it's time to grow.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's time to become more like me, more like God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk about these fruits of the spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk about my ministry and how I've cared about press people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And let's talk about a whole host to other things, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: We're just talking about one specific facet of Jesus heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are many things that he's passionate about in my prayer for you and for myself is that my heart becomes more like his heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I hope that that even this podcast can help you with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you enjoyed this episode, please let me know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Doing like song analyses is something that I enjoy doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I spend a lot of time talking to people about lyrics to songs and all this stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would love to continue to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: If it's something that you guys like, please reach out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, this is awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want more of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can leave comments on Spotify.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can send me messages through my website.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can do whatever you want.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of y'all see me in person.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can even let me know.
[SPEAKER_00]: about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: If it's something that you want more of, I will absolutely do more of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so please hit me up.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to have an interview show for the next one.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've already been working on the edit.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a couple more interviews coming up and so stay tuned for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if this is something that you really enjoy, let me know and I'll make more of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you guys so much for listening.
[SPEAKER_00]: It really has been a pleasure.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope this song is impactful for you and it spurs you to become more like Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, see you all later.