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After track three asks where we might go to find a sense of home, track number four takes us to one of the ugliest sites in Christianity: clergymen who are obsessed with growing their churches and their movements instead of obsessively leaving the 99 in search of the 1 lost sheep. Pastors who primarily see others through utilitarian lenses. “How can this person advance my vision?”

But the song is sung from the complicated vantage point of one who is under the pastoral care and leadership of such a kind of clergyperson. It’s the multi-layered perspective of someone who esteems, loves, reveres, and feels a deep sense of belonging with the one who performs spiritual abuse. That convoluted place where power dynamics make truth telling implausible. The adolescent who all his life longed for a father figure finding solace in a strangely parasitic abusive relationship.

If you’ve never read the blog entires on joyfulexiles.com, I recommend you read it with caution. Various people who exited or were shunned from Mark Driscoll's Mars Hill Church, including many ex-pastors and their wives, share shocking stories of bullying and exploitation. Within the walls of a church so well polished and highly acclaimed, there was outright emotional and spiritual abuse in the name of Jesus. This song joins their lament and pursuit of clarity.

The track is also a small act of rebellion against typical evaluations of popular music. It’s a 9 minute song with atypical song structure. I suppose it's AABCDEFG. It’s a blatant attempt at coloring outside the lines to tell the sunday school art instructor that her evaluative scales are not determinative of a job well done. When I write music, I want to be the kid who colors for the enjoyment of coloring and then eats the crayon afterwards.

“I kept these skeletons deep in my closet / stories untold, stories so delicate / I was light, I was deceived / I was color, I was unseen"

lyrics

If I’ve ever seen a wolf
In the garments of sheep
Disguised as my destiny
If I’ve ever heard a snake
Dressed in a tongue
Of make belief fame
Distracted in love
Enslaved to my passion
Serving a god
In make belief mansions
I was young, I was brave
I was a fool, I was a slave

Oh...

If I’ve ever dined with a wolf
Talking to me
About holy dreams
If I’ve ever shook hands with a snake
With a smile on his face
My honor to take
I kept these skeletons deep in my closet
Stories untold, stories so delicate
I was light, I was deceived
I was color, I was unseen

Oh...

"I’ll build a house in Hollywood
I’ll call it international
If they should ask me for the truth
I’ll say,
‘god told me to'
‘god told me to’"

It goes deeper and deeper
The story of love defiled
In "holy" ambition
It goes deeper and deeper
The song of a child is lost
In vain repetition

He built a house at 29
On the back of children,
On a woman’s spine
He said they’d be grateful
If they'd chain themselves to the "faithful"
As the water would fall
The sun it would shine
We started to see an opened disguise
Surely yet slow, there in the light
A crease in the clothes,
A man but a swine
Children were slow to open their eyes
Ever afraid of what they would find
He was a father, fed them til then
Only in love, if only, instead
Look at him, how he stumbles along
Colorful words to cover his wrongs
Heaven forbid to discover his end
Only to see he's already dead

he's already dead, he's already dead, he's already dead
meaningless songs, on and on and on and on
his meaningless song, meaningless song
on and on and on, on and on and on
meaningless song, colors won't cover it
no, no, no, and the colors won't cover it
no, no, no, i'll build a house in hollywood
i'll build a house again

credits

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