In this post last year I embedded a 4Shared link to "I Will Be Here" by Steven Curtis Chapman. Unfortunately, 4Shared has now become subscription only, so you can't listen to that link unless you have a 4Shared account. You can find the song all over Youtube, but usually in a newer arrangement. I have a preference for the older musical arrangement, so here it is:
Chapman has said that he wrote the song in response to the shock of his own parents' divorce (which occurred after Steven was married), as a reaffirmation to his wife of the promise he had made to her at their wedding. Christian music buffs also know that Chapman's wife Mary Beth lives with clinical depression, a biographical fact that gives the lyrics even more poignancy, as does the tragedy they suffered later in the accidental death of their adopted daughter.
Chapman's expression of absolute commitment and love is the answer both to the unnatural distortions being currently foisted upon us as "love" by liberalism and also to marital cynicism, whether of the left or of the right. Anyone who has grown or has made himself, through ideology, so hard-hearted, so opposed to chivalry and to true, manly commitment and love for one's wife, that he can listen to that song and think and feel only that the speaker is setting himself up to be a "beta," a "white knight," a sucker to be hurt by some woman, has lost something deeply important. And any ideology that encourages and fosters such a loss is a deeply wicked ideology to which we should give no quarter, regardless of whether its proponents, like a stopped clock, occasionally make a true statement. This is as true for allegedly "conservative" misogyny as it is for man-hating feminism. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. (And if you are a modern misogynist or wish to tell me that I need to take such people and their ideas more seriously, don't bother trying to comment.)
Meanwhile, for all you normal and happily oblivious readers who have no idea what that last paragraph was about, just enjoy the song. It's a wonderful song. It's always been a popular wedding song, of course. May many more brides and grooms shed the tears of joy and awe at the gift God has given them that the song rightly inspires.
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2 comments:
Lydia,
Great song, and great reflections from you.
The best marriages, as meeting the description in Eph. 5:21-33 can work only if husband and wife become the marriage partners described by Paul. Paul does not describe an "alpha male."
For the lyrical opposite of Chapman, listen to "Thank God for Believers" by Mark Chesnutt.
And this is all about the relationship we have with God (that is, I believe, Paul's point in Ephesians). The "alpha males" will diminish when their prowess can no longer sustain their relationships (listen up, Mark Chesnutt). And the "betas" will ascend as the true winners.
The only relationships that endure are those covenants built around self-sacrificed partners.
Dr. David Hubbard speaks with brilliance here: ""Marriage does not demand perfection. But it must be given priority. It is an institution for sinners. No one else need apply. But it finds its finest glory when sinners see it as God's way of leading us through His ultimate curriculum of love and righteousness."
Thanks, John, for excellent comments.
At least the speaker in the Chesnutt song knows he's doing it wrong. I suppose a truly "alpha" piece of "music" is a rap lyric that glorifies slapping your woman around when she gets uppity.
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