Friends,

We have been working on a series of posts that deal, primarily, with   learning to listen to what people are saying in their music or art or films. Some rules do exist and were summarized by Chris L in his previous post:

1. To listen to what is being said by the “voices crying out in the wilderness” of the world

2. To discuss what they are saying – not their state of salvation

3. To discuss how best to connect to people with these thoughts/feelings

In this installment of the Learning to Listen(C) series I am exploring a song by the band Metallica. The song, Master of Puppets, is, simply put, one of the best songs available for discussing one of the most prevailing ailments facing our culture: Addiction. We talk about addiction in our culture as long as the addiction is tobacco, drugs, or alcohol. I remember one time popular CCM artist Carmen even mocked those who were addicts by recording a song called A2J (Addicted to Jesus). Rarely is addiction discussed when it comes to other things that we find ourselves addicted to: sex, blogging, television, attention, etc. I think Metallica did a masterful job in this song and I’d like to explore it a bit with you and listen to what they are saying.

[Content warning at 2:39. Also, this is not the best version of this song. The studio track is much better and cleaner. But back then, Metallica didn't make videos for their music.]

Master of Puppets

End of passion play, crumbling away
I’m your source of self-destruction
Veins that pump with fear, sucking dark is clear
Leading on your deaths construction

Taste me you will see
More is all you need
Dedicated to
How I’m killing you

Come crawling faster
Obey your Master
Your life burns faster
Obey your Master
Master

Master of Puppets I’m pulling your strings
Twisting your mind and smashing your dreams
Blinded by me, you can’t see a thing
Just call my name, ’cause I’ll hear you scream
Master
Master
Just call my name, ’cause I’ll hear you scream
Master
Master

Needlework the way, never you betray
Life of death becoming clearer
Pain monopoly, ritual misery
Chop your breakfast on a mirror

Taste me you will see
More is all you need
Dedicated to
How I’m killing you
Come crawling faster
Obey your Master
Your life burns faster
Obey your Master
Master

Master of Puppets I’m pulling your strings
Twisting your mind and smashing your dreams
Blinded by me, you can’t see a thing
Just call my name, ’cause I’ll hear you scream
Master
Master
Just call my name, ’cause I’ll hear you scream
Master
Master

Master, Master, where’s the dreams that I’ve been after?
Master, Master, you promised only lies
Laughter, Laughter, all I hear or see is laughter
Laughter, Laughter, laughing at my cries
Hell is worth all that, natural habitat
Just a rhyme without a reason
Neverending maze, drift on numbered days
now your life is out of season
I will occupy
I will help you die
I will run through you
Now I rule you too
Come crawling faster
Obey your Master
Your life burns faster
Obey your Master
Master

I’m Your Source of Self-Destruction

When I was a teenager, if you listened to Metallica, you were considered a devil-worshiper. Of course, I grew up in the days of the pre-ODM culture when ODM’s were called the PMRC and headed up by the wives of some Washington senators who had nothing better to do with their time but censor the culture. Of course, as with the Israelites in Egypt, the more they persecuted, the more they pushed, the more the headbanging culture prospered and multiplied. Nowadays, it is actually rather sickening to see little teenaged cheerleader types wearing Metallica shirts and ‘banging their heads.’ Where were they when we suffered the PMRC? I liked it better when Metallica was so rebellious that they wouldn’t even make videos for their music. But I digress; I’m an old-school headbanger.

Metallica, for all the vilification, actually wrote great music. (I don’t listen to much of their new stuff so I cannot comment much, but their old stuff was simply beautiful lyrically.) I think back to the Ride the Lightning album and the songs were amazing. They wrote of cultural problems like the death penalty (Ride the Lightning); drew lyrics straight from the Scripture (Creeping Death); talked about taboo subjects like teen suicide (Fade to Black); the search for true life (Trapped under ice); sang of the horrors of nuclear holocaust (Fight Fire with Fire); and drew lyrics from Hemingway and Donne in writing of the stupidity of war (For Whom the Bell Tolls). Ride the Lightning was a masterful exploration of the faces of death; death from every conceivable point of view. Death is one of the main topics of the Bible. Metallica explored its depths, but ultimately their laments provided no way out as is suggested by the title ‘trapped under ice.’

As Metallica matured as song writers, their lyrics matured and deepened, and their concern over the death-riddled culture continued to develop. In fact, some of Metallica’s best songs are songs they have written in protest to the war culture: Disposable Heroes, One, and For Whom the Bell Tolls are simply outstanding songs (the video for One is amazing.) Our song for this installment, Master of Puppets, is no different. It too deals with death, but not the instantaneous death of nuclear war, or the suffocating death of a purposeless life, or a stupid death in war, but rather the slow agonizing death of addiction. It is a sad, sad song with it’s ‘Master, Master,’ refrain. They realize that when we submit ourselves to being our own masters, we become our own source of destruction. Master, Master! We wonder out loud if there is a way out of this maze of slow death.

Come Crawling Faster

Drug addiction is devastating. It ruins lives. It destroys families. It wrecks careers and ultimately destroys the image of God in a person. It’s Smeagol become Gollum. It’s Edmond Dantes and revenge. It’s Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Shannon Hoon, Layne Staley, Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard, and many, many more.; it’s me; it’s you. Addiction has destroyed the lives of many, many people as it reduced them to mere slaves, mere puppets on strings. Addiction, and not just drug addiction, is a real and serious problem in our culture. People are addicted to a variety of things from plastic surgery to sex to porn to the internet to laziness. Addiction reduces all addicts to the role of mere slave.

I have to be honest, I believe this to be one area of the church where we have failed miserably. I could be wrong, and likely I am, but the church often preaches the ‘big’ sins: abortion, homosexuality, etc., but how often do we really talk about addiction, the sort of addiction that destroys life, lives; the sort of addiction that cannot be conquered by mere men? I wonder how much addiction is actually to the root problem of the ‘big sins’ we preach against. We are facing this issue right now in Ohio with the addition to the November ballot of Issue 6 which seeks to, ultimately, permit the operation of a casino in the state. There is a heated battle going on in the media. Strangely silent has been the church.** But this is only one more form addiction. It’s being touted as ‘jobs, jobs, jobs,’ and even those who are opposed to it are merely stating things like ‘they won’t pay all the taxes they are claiming they will pay.’ No one is saying what an approved Issue 6 will do to families, communities, and to the state. I lived in West Virginia for a while, near Mountaineer Gaming Resort; I have seen up close what such resorts do for communities.

I couldn’t seem to convinced the people who lived there, when I preached in a small church in WV, of the dangers of such a place as Mountaineer Gaming Resort. They were too dependent upon the jobs that it provided, the out of state revenue, and the extra-curricular money from sales of cigarettes, alcohol, and nudie bars. Drive through Chester, Newell or New Cumberland, WV or East Liverpool, OH, sometime. Tell me what you think. Tell me if addiction to gambling has improved the quality of life in those communities. Oh, but I forgot: Mountaineer buys new police cruisers every now and again. And the taxes help schools and…oh, yeah, well whatever.

What about the church? Do we have anything to say about this?

Chop Your Breakfast on a Mirror

It is strange to me that it is typically those who are involved in the addiction who realize most profoundly the devastating results and consequences of addiction. It’s no surprise that breakfast (an important image here), the most important meal of the day, becomes nothing more than another opportunity to feed the addiction; to feed the rush. I don’t find it odd at all that those addicted to the rush recognize that addiction reduces people to mere slaves. I don’t find it odd that those who are addicted find feeding the addiction more important than feeding the body or the spirit.

Understanding how they feel is not a terribly difficult exercise. Could be that we necessarily have bodies that are prone to addiction and that it is entirely too easy for us to become addicted to the very thing we hate and lament in songs and poetry. Could be that we get in and we just do not know how to escape. Could be that we try just a little and then a little ‘gets more and more’ (Mr Brownstone, G-n-R; another profound song about addiction). Could be that some actually enjoy the trapped feeling. But no one wants to be a slave. The problem is that those who becomes slaves once thought they could tower over their addiction and become the master. We actively become passive slaves as we lose inhibition and the will to fight. Slaves only come crawling faster, faster. The question is, then, how do we get out? How do we escape? Is there any help for addicts outside the Methadone clinics and half-way houses?

Do we have a message of hope for them? I’m not naive enough to think ‘we’ can save everyone, but are we making the effort? Or are we a part of the problem?

Drift on Numbered Days

NT Wright has a small book of sermons that were published just last year. The collection Christians at the Cross, is a series of sermons he preached during holy week at a church in England. The subtitle to the book is Finding Hope in the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus. In the book, he writes:

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Now we’ll come back to this on Easter Morning, because that’s of course where the church’s mission really gets going. But let’s take this action-song just one step further. Here we are, with the Last Supper and Jesus’ astonishing action of washing the disciples’ feet, and saying ‘now you’ve see it, go and do it.’ And here is our ground bass part, the Passover story which is all about God setting people free from slavery. Now let’s ask ourselves: Where is there slavery of some sort or another within a mile of where we are this evening, and what is God doing about it?

The answer isn’t far away. There are people in the Colliery—I’ve met some of them—who have lost hope and are angry and bitter. There are young people who are in virtual slavery to drink, drugs and sex and the long-term prospect of getting trapped in unemployment. There are old people who are afraid to go out because of what’s happening on the streets where they’ve lived all their lives. And we need to ask, in relation to all of them: What would it look life for them to be set free from that slavery? And how can our celebration of Jesus’ strange new Passover equip us to be a part of that answer?”—NT Wright, Christians at the Cross, 46-47

The debate about the cross always seems to come back to the penalty phase of Jesus’ death. I don’t disagree that there is a penalty aspect to His cross work, but I don’t think that we can exclude or neglect the aspect of the cross work that also brings us hope because ultimately Jesus, in the cross, has done away with sin, death, and, I believe, all those things which lead to sin and death. He was, and is, Victorious over those principalities and powers that sought to triumph over us. So that ultimately it is in the cross that Jesus sets people free. Paul says in Romans 8 that the world was subjected to bondage, but he also states that the world will be liberated from that bondage through Jesus Christ. “Who will rescue me,” he asks, “from this wretched body of death: Thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (7:24)

To Those in Christ

The world is full of slaves of all different shapes and sizes and sexes and colors and varieties. Slaves are men, women, and children.  The masters also come in many sizes and shapes and varieties. Masters are impartial: They don’t care who their servants are as long as their work gets done. But I think we have something offer people, yet, not we, but Christ. He said, “If the son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” The question is, how do we share that Christ with people, that is, the Christ who sets people free? How do we tell them about freedom in Jesus? How do we show them the love of Christ that triumphs over their slavery and frees them for life, and life to the fullest? How do we rescue people from their slow drift on numbered days? How can we teach or show or demonstrate this life:

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. 14For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. 18You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.(Romans 6:11-18)

Look! There it is! The grace of God! And maybe, just maybe, as soon as Christians stop living like addicts, the world will believe that we have something that will also set them free. Paul said it: I will not be mastered by anything. (1 Cor 6:12).

Learning to Listen Series:

Alice in Chains: Down in a Hole

Styx: Show Me the Way

**Could be that the church has said something about Issue 6 and I just don’t know about it. After all, I’m not in every congregation, every Sunday to know what is going on or what the preacher is saying.

Tags: Addiction, Chrstians, Freedom, Jesus Christ, Metallica, NT Wright, Romans, slavery