Contemporary Studies

Metro-lyrics and coping with human identity seeking

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Visiting Professor

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

18 December  2011

           X-Japan's Last Song in 1997 with the death of the head singer Hide is a gripping piece of music. In 2008, it was performed with a symphony orchestra presentation and the arena was packed. Very classical, very impressive piano heart-beat soft rhythm. Since the headsinger committed suicide, his solo role was played by video. Why he committed suicide is a riddle. With any suicide, there are no answers and immediate family, friends and admirers are in shock and deep pain. One should see suicide and selfishness as connected. Suicide and society are not two words related but opposites. In this earth full of defective situations and relationships, we are all squashed together, closer with no person as an island to him/herself. Last year my cousin committed suicide. Unexpected, a mystery to all who knew him. His sister and two brothers in total confusion. In my highschool years, my father's brother committed suicide. Tragic with equal riddles and unanswered ends to the stories. Someone cares, although the person does not realize that after his/her death. Someone is crying at the funeral. Someone is missing and sit in memory pains.

           Nature is beautiful, said Calvin, but we can only get to know the hands and feet of God through it but with the Scriptures we can get to know His heart. It is the heart that magnetically clings to ours when we seek Him. All humans are seeking. They seek answers for sadness, for pain, for illnesses, for cancer, for terminal situations, for young deaths, for hunger-sufferings, for chaos, for confusion. They seek answers for alienation, for loneliness, for abandonment, for people or friends ignoring them, for misunderstandings, for rejection, for discrimination suffering, for hate-speech against them, for fighting, wars, death and discomfort.

           Most people and most singers in metro-lyrics, most poets and most thinkers, wish to sort out these answers by themselves without help from God. They wish to sit neutrally on a pavilion, trying to figure out their existence and that of others. Why they exist, why others exist. Where all things are leading to. They insist to find the answers but they refuse to use the Scriptures what Calvin was mentioning. They forget the Scriptures is also a library of books and poems and biographies of people like us, sitting with the same problems. When one reads this greatest of search-engines, greater than yahoo, daum, naver, google and all the others, when one reads this search engine, the search engine is reading us. If we make the Scripture our object, we become the object and Scripture the subject. Roles are reversed. The more we read, the more we are changed. We cannot remain the same. The more we delve into it, the more we are transformed. We learn of immense powers that are available and people friendly as well. We experience a silence in the inside amidst noisy cries outside. We calm down in our anxious display of emotions. We slow down our pace while all are running. We relax with information of the future while all are wondering what will happen tomorrow. All because we are reading the Scriptures.

           Neil Diamond said that he is lost between two worlds and X-Japan asked in the Last Song whether it is wrong to cry in the rain knowing that the Last Song will be sung.

           That reality of the lastness of us, the end, the stopping point, is also treated and considered in the Scriptures. It is true that all people are dying, all become only a memory but the Scriptures point out that it was not meant to be that way in the beginning. The first humans made an enormous mistake by choosing evil instead of their Creator and as temporary punishment all had to die until the Creator died Himself in their stead to save them and overturn the evil's claim in a great judgment of equals seeking for justice and peace. Although the Creator died 2000 years ago, the actions of evil had to be clearly demonstrated after that good news became known all over the world and then a judgment or court had to sit and judge everyone actions.

           The good news is that the very same Creator is advocate on the behalf of the one who accepts Him to be representative of them. It is that simple. They do not appear in the court at all. Only their name comes up and books of their actions. But the Creator who has a relationship with these people who got interested in Him and His Scripture, clear their case immediately. It is the investigative court scenes that are right now in progress. When this finished there is going to be an arrival in massive scale with capabilities to resurrect all the dead friends, fathers, mothers, grandparents, girlfriends, boyfriends, loved ones, provided they also met Him and walked with Him.

           Scripture actually indicate that the seeker of identity should just follow Him since He will walk in front. Daily the person connects the first thing in the morning with Him. Power in and around the person helps the person and reading the Scriptures provides strong navigational tools for the day to handle any conflict, anger, aggression, discouragement, loneliness, anguish. Inner strength is the secret but where to get it is important. The inside tools of our existence is just not able to fill that vacuum or emptiness. Our existence alone cannot answer all the why's. It cannot make the why a therefore. We need an objective outside tool and Scripture was given for that purpose.

           So while Metro-lyrics are beautiful and inspirational, their words are so too if they are for example the song “Alpha and Omega” by the Golden Angels Singers on Youtube. It is meaningful if it is the song "He touched me" by Elvis Presley or the Gaither group. The grandfather in the Gaither group is actually the composer of this song in 1963. God must touch the reader of His Scriptures. Then the person will not be the same any longer.

           It is not good enough to live from song to song and lyrics to lyrics. It is like eating only spaghetti at all meals. Scripture reading is the way to strengthen our knowledge and understanding, to gain experience, to find our identity and become a navigational tool to others who are lost in identity seeking in this world.

           Then everything is no longer just in a circle as X-Japan sings in the Last Song in 1997.

“In endless rain I've been walking

Like a poet feeling pain

Trying to find the answers

Trying to hide the tears

But it was just a circle

That never ends“

           Instead of a circle, Scripture says that all is in a straight line, maybe a spiral, that gives the quick impression of a circle to the uninformed but actually has a beginning-point and an end-point. Everything in this world is not going to carry on forever this way. X-Japan understood existence well, defective existence that is, but Scripture's perspective of the existence transformed at the end-point, that part was lacking. Maybe that is why Hide committed suicide, or not?. We will never know for sure but finding Scriptures online at Gateway, is one way of making a difference today in our lives. It is never too late to start but too early to quit.

To discover that we are lost is the beginning of great things but to remain lost is an eternal disaster