The recent tragedy in Charleston highlights again the tragedy of mental illness and the darkness that envelops much of people’s lives. The media feeds us with fear and stories of despair, but we rarely hear the stories of hope and goodness in the world.
John Mellencamp wrote this song more than 20 years ago, and it seems more relevant than ever in 2015. I’ve been listening to this song a bit recently. Some of the lyrics have been sticking in my mind, and they are even moreso after the tragedy of Charleston.
In particular, the second half of the second verse strikes me as prophetic to this time in our lives:
Yeah, the air could be cleaner and the water could too.
But what we do to each other are the worst things that we do.
And we can treasure our freedom behind our locked doors.
But God speed the day when we’re lonely no more.
The message of our society is that individualism is freedom. But the reality of our society is that individualism is loneliness. We see it more and more in our culture. I remember growing up in the 1970s and knowing all our neighbours. I can still picture my Dad handing some chairs over the fence to the man next door. We knew the people not just next door but in the houses next to theirs and those next to theirs. As well as that, we knew the people in the next street. It was just the way life was.
As time went on though, and people moved out and others moved in, the relationships died off. The fences grew higher and the streets grew more silent.
Individualism is not the answer to life; it is not freedom. It is instead isolation and loneliness. That is what drives people to commit acts like the world has just seen in Charleston. Over and over, it is revealed that lone shooters are just that: loners with no friends and who don’t fit in to respectable society.
Of course part of me feels anger at the despicable acts of Dylann Roof. But another part of me sees the pain behind his delusion. It seems this was a hate crime, planned for months. It speaks to a lot of issues in America, not least the continual controversy of how easy it is to obtain firearms in that country.
The shooting at Charleston is one more tragedy in a world that is lost and broken. In Australia we have a Government that believes that coal is the future of humanity when the rest of the affluent world is moving in the opposite direction. In the Middle East we have ISIS who believe that violence is the means to influence people to their destructive ways, and in America we have Jeb Bush who thinks he can challenge the Pope on Catholic social teaching on climate change.
We are a deluded people. Without outside guidance we don’t know where our lives are headed. In a culture like ours, we don’t even think much about where our lives are headed, such is our satiation. We are literally being entertained to death.
Our society needs hope and prophetic truth to give us meaning and purpose again. Songs like this can inspire us. I hope it does that for you.
“Another Sunny Day 12/25” – John Mellencamp
We see it on TV, we get calls on the phone
By the prophets of doom, they won’t leave us alone.
The planet is dying and there’s no time to spare.
They spend all our days sowing seeds of despair.
We get enough bad news to harden our hearts.
This fear that we feed on is what’s keeping us apart.
To say that we’re doomed is just an obvious remark.
And it don’t make you right, it just keeps you in the dark.
I don’t want to live angry, I don’t want to live scared.
I don’t need no more prophets crying “brother beware.”
Just put some work in my hands and give me a dollar to spare.
And don’t let me sow those seeds of despair.
Well, this earth is a graveyard, it will swallow our bones.
It was here long before us, It will be here when we’re gone.
And it’s a vain generation that looks for a sign.
Don’t you think we could make better use of our time.
Yeah, the air could be cleaner and the water could too.
But what we do to each other are the worst things that we do.
And we can treasure our freedom behind our locked doors.
But God speed the day when we’re lonely no more.
I don’t want to live angry, I don’t want to live scared.
I don’t need no more prophets crying “brother beware.”
Just put some work in my hands and give me a dollar to spare.
And don’t let me sow those seeds of despair.
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