Oliver Anthony has joined Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix as a protest voice of his generation. Anthony’s songs released a few weeks ago touch a nerve by saying what many are thinking.
Anthony feels dismissed, devalued, and angry. He turns his time into money, but it’s taken away in taxes by “rich men north of Richmond” who “just wanna have total control.” He works all day for low pay just “so I can sit out here and waste my life away.” He concludes, “I wanna go home; I don’t know which road to go.”
The questions backstage of Anthony’s lyrics are as ancient as mankind. What is wrong with the world? Who am I? Do I matter? Is there any hope? Anthony’s intense lyrics blame politicians and bureaucrats. He’s saying, “I don’t know what to do, and I’m looking for a way out.” But are blame and escape the only answers when life is frustrating?
Life has been meaningless to the Dalits, the lowest caste in India for thousands of years. But that is changing for them. “When a Dalit hears God created man in His own image,” Dalit scholar Ram Surat explains, “it is the first time in their entire life that they feel like a human” (Gen. 1:27). Dalits are embracing identity and meaning in Christ more than any other people group in India. Each believer is “being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him” (Col. 3:10).
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl struggled to find meaning in life as he endured the horrors of Nazi concentration camps. On entering Auschwitz, the guards forced him to exchange his clothes for the tattered garments of a prisoner who died in the gas chamber. In the pocket he found a paper with the words, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might.” This challenged him with a reason to live, regardless of his circumstances.
Jesus challenges you to look beyond proximate circumstances. “You know how to analyze the appearance of the earth and the sky, but why do you not analyze this present time?” (Luke 12:56). Consider who He is and respond by turning to Him for forgiveness and new life. An eternal perspective changes your response to people leveraging power. “When Jesus rises from the dead, it means that human power never has the last word,” writes professor Justin Bailey. “There is something deeper and more definitive: grace.”
Mr. Anthony could learn from the Casting Crown lyrics, “I am a wave tossed in the ocean, a vapor in the wind. Still, You hear me when I’m calling, catch me when I’m falling, and You’ve told me who I am: I am yours.” To belong to God by identifying with Christ Jesus is to find truth and answers.