fear the random fate

man, so long without an actual update. well, i'm back, and i want to talk about jesus.

i just started listening to a new album (well, new to me) by mike doughty, the guy who used to front soul coughing. so, mike doughty is cool. the album is fantastic. but there's this one song, his truth is marching on, that really troubles me.

so, apparently mike doughty is a christian, and some of you might know about me that christian indie rockers ick me out a little bit. i love sufjan stevens and neutral milk hotel but it takes a bit more effort than usual. is that closed-minded and judgmental of me? sure. but let me explain why, using the example of this mike doughty song. mike doughty typically writes really gorgeous, insightful lyrics. in his truth is marching on, though, he starts out with some of the most trite, awful lines i've ever heard, especially compared to his other stuff:

they say that god is great/
they say that god is love/
well, i believe them/
don't fear the random fate/
i trust the hand of the almighty and the infinite

okay, now this is total crap, and not just because of the christianity aspect, although that's a large part of it. it's not imaginative in the least. sufjan would never write obvious lyrics like this. also, this line exemplifies the major thing that i think is wrong with christianity. "don't fear the random fate/i trust the hand of the almighty." you don't fear the random fate? why the hell not? sometimes awful random shit happens. sometimes a drunk driver crosses the center line. sometimes there's a war. sometimes the levees break and your entire city is flooded. god will not protect you from "the random fate." and if he does, what does that say about those he fails to protect?

this is the fundamental problem, the reason i have no faith: how can you believe that an all-powerful, all-knowing, benevolent god would allow, or even cause, horrible things to happen? i cannot accept that god is somehow "protecting" me, or mike doughty, or sufjan stevens, while allowing millions of people to suffer.

okay, since i've mentioned sufjan, let's talk about that guy for a minute. now, i absolutely love his music. let me just say that upfront. but i have some issues with the guy. in the song casimir pulaski day, which is about a friend dying of cancer, he says:

tuesday nights at the bible study/
we lift our hands and pray over your body/
but nothing ever happens/

then...

Oh the glory that the lord has made/
And the complications when I see his face/
In the morning in the window/

Oh the glory when he took our place/
But he took my shoulders and he shook my face/
And he takes and he takes and he takes/

now, a lot of you know that i was a christian for a long time, until i was 15 or so. basically, i was a christian until this benevolent god question occurred to me, then i thought, well, there's probably not really a literal god anyway, but even if there really is a god and this is how he operates, i want nothing to do with it. so i guess i assumed that people are only christians until this question occurs to them - then, finding it intractable, they become former christians, like i did. but, look at those sufjan lyrics! he has obviously had the thought, "god could have done something to save my friend's life, but he chose not to" and yet continued to have faith. how is that possible? can you really fully believe that god has some grand master plan that makes up for all the shit we have to go through? i have no idea.

so, coming back to my original point that christian indie rockers ick me out: i think it's because i expect these people to have some sort of insight that i don't have. i want them to explain something to me, or make me see something in a way i haven't thought of before. but, "everything will be okay if you just trust jesus" is such a cop-out.

or maybe music should just be music.

thoughts?