Lent has always been an important period of time for me. It’s a time of reflection and consideration. A time to identify which of my beliefs might be damaging. This Lent, I welcome you to join my journey, I welcome you to consider your notions about the universe, I welcome you to challenge yourself and to critique your own ideas.
F C Am G
Speak to me
So can speak to you
Let me see
How to follow through
C Am G F
(Jeremiah 29:13)
If I seek your love
Will find you above
I will seek out my part
I will seek with my whole heart
(Revelation 3:8)
I want to open the door
I’m gonna fall down to the floor
I want to know what I’m meant to do
So that I can enter with you
(psalms 13)
I don’t know my fate
I’m happy to wait
But how long will it be
How long will you hide from me
Consider and answer I pray
What do I have to say
Please light up my eyes
So can shut down the lies
Am /A /G /F /E
Since I was young,
I’s blessed with more than I was due
Raised into a family,
who taught me all about you
I always had,
Everything that I would need
Success in life
Was already kinda guaranteed
But I know so many people
Don’t get this kinda start in life
And the rest of their days are a struggle
Filled with such strife
Oh God how can I thank you
For all that I’ve been given
When my success
Is an indictment on society’s condition
Cmaj7 Am7 Dm7 E G#dim69
Oh my God, turn your face from me
I look around, and there’s others with more need
People going hungry
People who aren’t free
You’ve given too much to me
Now turn your face from me
Am G F Em Dm Dmdim Cmaj7
Am /A /G /F /E
I wrote this song
upon a phone made in China
By a slave or low paid worker
Barely employed by the supplier
Cheep phones, nice clothes
We thank God when we’re successful
But there ain’t no deal
In the absence of the devil
We’ve outsourced our oppression
To excuse ourselves of guilt
But we all still fuel the system
That our ancestors built
We keep thanking God
For our kindly gifted treasures
But instead we should be thanking
The dictators and oppressors
Sorry, this one is a long one. I kinda went off and I still had material I had to leave out to keep it to around five minutes. Maybe I should do a ten-minute version of this one day that goes even deeper.
Please contact me if you have any questions about the song
This my modern revelation
of all of the churches
This me tearing down the idols
that all of you worship
If you’re neither hot nor cold
you will be spat out
Time to rip the church apart
Time to explore your doubt
The last book of the Bible
is revelation by John
he’s sat in prison telling
all the churches where they’re wrong
Now I’m no theologian
but I’ve tried some churches out
and maybe 90 percent of those
make me want to scream and shout
Every time a preacher says
something I relate
they ruin it with ideology
saying god makes all things great
now I just want a conversion
I don’t wanna hate
But I’m dropping this diss-track
cos I’m sick of the debate
False Prophet
That’s the cry
When anybody says something
you don’t like
False Prophet
I hear the cries
When anybody looks at something
Through their own eyes
How do you square a loving God
with predestination?
how do you square a loving God
with any form of damnation?
Exclusivists believe that heaven’s
Just for the few
But they seem happy knowing people who will burn
What’s wrong with you!
You monsters! Why aren’t you out there?
Get a megaphone and pray!
Unless of course you don’t really believe
Everything that you say
If you literally believe
in a literal hell
Then how the hell are you not panicking
That you’ll go as well
Alternatively universalists
Think everyone is saved
So I can’t wait to go to heaven
And punch Pol Pot in the face
Penal substitutionary
theory of atonement
Taught in most modern-day churches
But let’s just give that thought a moment
God’s so angry at us humans
That he kills his own son
Satisfied by watching torture
Content when the deed was done
No matter your thoughts on the trinity
This idea should cause alarm
It’s either cosmic child abuse
Or divine self-harm
Protestants your faith came from
a needed reformation
‘cept your origins involve
serious anti-Semitism
When Martin Luther was asked
“What should we do with the Jews?”
He said “First, to set fire to
their synagogues and schools”
This guy was inspiration for Hitler
And founded your religion
So when you listen to your vicar preach
keep an air of suspicion
Mostly everything you worship
is just a divine rival
to the thing you’re trying to worship
I know you’re in denial
Look if you worship a saint
that’s an idol
If you pray to the dead
yeah probably an idol!
If you think that God will make you money
definitely an idol
If you think that God will make you happy
that’s also an idol
If you think, wait this could just go on
let’s try to break the cycle
Every finite notion of God in your head
by definition’s an idol!
Yes this also goes for Protestants who
worship their Bible
Calling it ‘the word of God’
Wait? That was Jesus’ title!
Catholics and baptists
Better practice what you preach
Cos it no don’t matter when you’re baptised
if you don’t love, you just teach
Now the King’s and free
Tell you what to believe
And if you don’t agree with them
Then you can pack your bags and leave
Progressive christianity
is nice and cool
but you’ve still got the shadow of the Buddha
on your cave wall
Process theology
and essential kenosis
have a kind feeble god
might as well just worship my left toeses
Now Quakers, not gonna lie
Insulting you is kinda tough
But only cos there’s really nothing
you stand for enough
Now Methodist your idea of passion
Is just a ‘strangly warmed heart’
Yo where’s the fire and the burning
from the Pentecost start
I went to a Hillsong service once
with all the sights, sounds and lights
a millionare said be more generous
and passed the collection plate round twice
And all these denominations
Say they care ’bout the Earth
And I’ll believe them when they divest from oil
And prove their worth
JWs put so much emphasis
On God’s name
Except Yahweh and Jehovah’s
Derivation is the same
What makes you think
the name Jehovah is the best
It was just four Hebrew letters
And the vowels are all guessed
Mormons all believe a message
Send by Jo Smith
Who basically rewrote the Bible
Y’all that kinda cultish
Ravi Zacharias
Claimed to be so high and pious
But his blatant abuse
Rendered nothing but silence
Kenneth Copeland is responsible
for ruining lives
tells his congregants who’ve lost their job
to keep paying tithes
Ontological demons are a myth
but something’s possessed that sod
and how come covid still exists
after his wind of God
Rob Bell never cites his references
and left Mars Hill real unstable
and Pete Rollins won’t shut up about
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Osteen forgives all
So long as he gets paid
Pilavachi built a career
On the fact that he couldn’t get laid
Please contact me if you have any questions about the song
Have you not heard of the madman who lit a lantern on a bright summer’s morning and ran into the marketplace crying out incessantly: “I seek God! I seek God!”? As many of those who were standing around did not believe in God, he provoked much laughter. Is he got lost? asked one. Or did god lose his way like a little child? joked another. Is he hiding from us? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone off on a voyage? Emigrated?
They yelled and they laughed until the madman leaped into their midst, pierced them with his eyes and said, “Where is God? I will tell you. God is dead, and we have killed him. We are his murderers. But how did we do this? Who are we to have accomplished such a deed? How could we have drunk up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we thinking when we unchained the earth from its sun? Where is it going now? Where are we going? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Downward, backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Is it not becoming colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing yet of the divine decomposition? Because gods, too, decompose.
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us—for the sake of this deed shall belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.”
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last, he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. “I have come to early,” he said; “my time is not yet. This tremendous deed is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached your ears. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars—and yet they have done it themselves.”
Has no one ever told about
The story of the madman
Who went to the market one bright summer’s morning
Holding a flaming lantern
The man cried out ‘where is God’
But the people laughed and mocked
For all the folk stood around him at the time
Had long since outgrown gods
Has he lost his way
Like a child, one asked
or is he scared
And hiding from us
maybe he’s on a voyage
to a far off land
He could be tryna get back
But it’s just longer than planned
They yelled and they laughed
With jocular cries
Until the madman leapt forwards
And pierced them with his eyes
He said, where is God
I will tell you where
God is dead
And yet none of you care
But how could we have done this
How did we achieve this deed
How could we drink up the ocean
As nature’s tiny seed
What the blazes were we thinking
When we unchained the Earth from its sun
Plunging continually with no direction
No forward or back to come from
Can’t you feel the empty breath
Of despair and anxiety
Can’t you all that taste the bitter taste
All the toxins from being so free
Can’t you hear the grave diggers dig
Can’t you sense that spell
The whiff of divine decomposition
Yeah gods decompose as well
God is dead, god remains dead
And we have killed him
But how do we comfort ourselves
For this final fatal sin
The God above all gods
Who granted us our lives
The mightiest one of existence
Lays dead by our knives
What water can cleanse us
What games shall we have to invent
What festivals of atonement can help
Now we’ve killed our means to repent
Must we not become ourselves gods
To make us worthy of this deed
For every generation to follow
belongs to a new history
I have come too early
My time is not yet
The deed is done but you are still
Yet to feel the debt
What’s done is done
And what’s said has been said
But one day it will hit you
The fact that God is dead
Lent has always been an important time for me. A time of reflection and consideration. A time to identify which of my beliefs might be damaging. This Lent, I welcome you to join my journey, I welcome you to consider your notions about the universe, I welcome you to challenge yourself and to critique your own ideas.
Advent is a time of preparation for the incarnation of God, we celebrate it by eating Chocolate everyday, by satisfying our desires in true hedonistic tradition.
Lent is a time of preparation for the death of God, we process the trauma by fasting, by trying to rid ourselves of desires in true nihilistic tradition.
This Lent, I will be releasing 5 songs which I wrote over the past 5 years during periods of time where I was challenging my own beliefs.
I never actually studied philosophy, I’m only pretending to know what I’m talking about.
One of the unique identifiers of Judaism as a religion in the Ancient world was its monotheistic stance, its rejection of all other gods. The ancient Romans accused early Christians of being ‘atheists’ for not worshipping the pagan deities. The Romans cared very little whether people worshipped their local gods or not, so long as they also worshipped the Roman gods. Early Christians weren’t persecuted for worshipping their ‘God’ but were persecuted for refusing to worship all the others. For me, the fundamental feature of Christianity is the refusal to worship an idol.
An idol is defined as “an image or representation of a god used as an object of worship”. Some idols in the Bible are obviously idols for example Baal and Asherah who, in a slightly henotheistic manner, are often presented as competitors to the ancient Jewish God. Other idols are harder to identify such as the golden calf who was presented as the god who brought the Israelites out of Egypt. The calf wasn’t being used as an opponent to the true God, it was an image to represent the true God, and it too was rejected as an idol.
So in order to reject all idols, all images which attempt and fail to capture the true God must be rejected. This is the primary principle of Christianity, accurate atheism. To a modern-day reader, seeing Christianity and Atheism presented so closely linked might seem alien and might make some feel slightly uncomfortable. So let’s try taking that a step further.
Epistemological Nihilism is a form of philosophical scepticism which rejects all forms of knowledge. It argues that as humans can only ever interact with the world through the lens of being a human, we can not know anything to be real. The only thing we can know is that we know nothing. It’s difficult to have a conversion with someone who identifies too strongly with Epistemological Nihilism because, for all they know, you don’t exist and they are just a brain in a vat and you’re just a part of their imagination which means you can’t teach them anything they don’t already know. I’ve met people like that and I don’t think they offer a particularly good example of their philosophy.
On the other hand, Epistemological Nihilism is correct in many ways. Without going too far down the rabbit hole of Plato, we live in a world of imperfect reflections. For example, it’s impossible to create a perfect circle using matter because a perfect circle requires infinite precision. The concept of a perfect circle only really exists in theoretical mathematics.
Fortunately, wheels don’t have to be perfect circles, nor do screws or washers or anything useful in the real world. The fact that we can’t create a perfect circle doesn’t make circular tools useless or evil. These tools are imperfect images of the perfect circle but continue to perform the role of the circle.
So is this the same with God? Well, I don’t know anyone who can honestly argue that they understand all aspects of God in God’s entirety. God is by definition infinite, and our finite imaginations can never fully capture the totality of God. Just like the imperfect circles, we can only attempt to create imperfect, incomplete images of God. But just like the imperfect circles, these reflections are still useful, right?
Well, if the primary focus of Christianity is the refusal to worship idols “an image or representation of a god used as an object of worship” then no. All our imperfect images of God are idols and as such, by the Christian ethic, must be rejected. All our best attempts, all our models of the divine which imitate God but which fails to meet God’s true standard, they are filthy rags to the divine perfection of a God and must be rejected.
The most truly radical expression of Christianity is also the most radical expression of Atheism. Rejection of all gods, rejection of any attempt to describe God, rejection even of the name ‘God’ for it too fails to capture the truth. As Meister Eckhart once prayed, “God rid me of God”, the true Christian rejects their own perceived knowledge of God and turns to the void of Epistemological Nihilism.