The book of Psalms in the Old Testament is
a collection of songs written about and to God.
While many of these songs celebrate God's
faithfulness and sing praise to him, there
are others which are considerably more downcast
- angry at God for abandoning them and questioning
His faithfulness.
In fact, the Bible has many stories of devout,
holy people who questioned God: from Job who
lost everything, to David King of the Israelites
who wrote many of those psalms, and even Jesus
himself, in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Doubting God is never portrayed in the Bible
as a negative thought you should avoid, but
rather a step toward understanding God a little
better.
In 2015, two darling indie folk artists wrote
their own psalms - two albums about times
in their own lives when their faith was tested,
and felt like they had been abandoned by God.
Sufjan Stevens has never been shy in his music
about his Christian faith.
His album Seven Swans is entirely devoted
to the weaving of personal experiences with
bible stories, and he often conflates ideas
of romantic love with his personal relationship
to Jesus.
(“To be alone with me, you went upon a tree.”)
Sufjan grew up in Michigan and was primarily
raised by his father and stepmother, however
he spent a number of childhood summers in
Oregon with his biological mother Carrie and
stepfather Lowell.
Carrie suffered from depression, schizophrenia
and alcoholism, so Sufjan’s relationship
with his mother had always been fairly strained.
In many ways he was closer to Lowell, who
was able to provide stability for Carrie’s
children during these trips.
Lowell has even been involved in Sufjan’s
music career, helping to run his record label
Asthmatic Kitty, and the pair releasing the
album “Aporia” together in March of 2020.
On his 2015 album Carrie & Lowell, Sufjan
offers small vignettes of his time in Oregon,
and particularly of his mother.
In Should Have Known Better Sufjan recalls
a memory of Carrie forgetting about him in
public.
("When I was three, three maybe four, she
left us at the video store.")
Her negligence is also apparent in the song
Eugene, as Sufjan speaks of trying to attract
his mother's attention.
("Remember I pulled at your shirt, I dropped
the ashtray on the floor.
I just wanted to be near you.)
He suggests that Carrie cared more about her
smoking than she did her children.
("Some part of me was lost in your sleeve
where you hid your cigarettes, no I'll never
forget.")
Despite being quite distant from his mother
for much of his life, Sufjan found himself
deeply affected by her death from stomach
cancer in 2012.
"Her death was so devastating to me because
of the vacancy within me.
I was trying to gather as much as I could
of her, in my mind, my memory, my recollections,
but I have nothing.
It felt unsolvable.
There is definitely a deep regret and grief
and anger."
But Sufjan isn’t interested in laying blame
- in the very first song, he tells Carrie
that he forgives her.
(“I forgive you mother, I can hear you,
and I long to be near you.”)
His mother’s death has not brought feelings
of resentment toward her, but of love and
missed opportunities.
The song Fourth of July puts Sufjan in conversation
with Carrie at her deathbed.
There is an intimacy between the two, as they
trade pet names and try to console one another.
(“Shall we look at the moon, my little loon,
why do you cry?”)
It’s a relationship that they likely didn’t
experience while she was alive.
Sufjan’s frustrations are instead directed
toward God.
In Drawn to the Blood he once again likens
his faith to a physical relationship, depicting
God as an abusive partner.
(“The strength of his arm / my lover caught
me off-guard.”)
“The strength of his arm” is a reference
to Luke 1:51, a line from a song that Mary
the mother of Jesus sings when she discovers
she is pregnant.
(“He has shown strength with his arm, He
has scattered the proud in the imagination
of their hearts.”)
Sufjan questions why God has turned around
and used their righteous strength against
him.
(“For my prayer has always been love / what
did I do to deserve this?”)
Sufjan also uses the biblical story of Samson
and Delilah to suggest the betrayal he feels,
and conjures an image of broken faith with
a one-winged dove.
This crisis of faith sent Sufjan down a path
of self-destructive behaviours - he shared
with Pitchfork how engaging in the same patterns
as his mother somehow connected him to her.
He mentions this in No Shade in the Shadow
of the Cross - making references to substance
abuse and self-harm, and ending the song with
its lamentful title.
(“There’s no shade in the shadow of the
cross.”)
The foot of the cross is a place of peace
and comfort for Christians, a position of
supplication that serves as a reminder of
the saving grace of Jesus.
But for Sufjan, he no longer feels comfort
at the foot of the cross, where its shade
may be cast over him.
The Only Thing sees Sufjan at his lowest,
the greatest depths of his despair.
He contemplates the various ways he could
end his own life, but looks for any signs
not to: from stories in star constellations,
to meanings depicted in water stains on the
bathtub.
With the final verse however, he tips the
song’s structure on its head.
Instead of looking for ways to die, he finds
a reason to live.
(“The only reason why I continue at all
/ faith in reason, I wasted my life playing
dumb.”)
And in John, My Beloved, he ends the song
with a declaration of faith, more upfront
than he has ever been before in his music:
("Jesus, I need you, be near me, come shield
me from fossils that fall on my head.")
But ultimately there is very little resolution
to Sufjan’s anguish.
There is no narrative order to these songs,
and each one is filled with mixed emotions.
In much the same way that Sufjan felt abandoned
by Carrie in her life, it was in her death
that he felt abandoned by God.
If Sufjan’s faith was tested by tragedy,
Julien Baker is the opposite.
She opens her 2015 album Sprained Ankle with
the spiritual disconnection she feels in her
everyday life.
(“Do you think that there’s a way I’d
ever get so far / that you’d ask me where
I’d been like I ask you where you are?”)
Julien often feels distant from God, but when
she goes on in the song to tell the story
of a car crash, she places God at the scene.
("I know I saw your hand when I went out and
wrapped my car, around the streetlamp.")
The way she ambiguously implicates God in
this accident could suggest she's either blaming
them for causing it to happen, or thanking
them for protecting her in it.
This traffic incident is just one of many
moments on Sprained Ankle that Julien finds
God while at her lowest.
Throughout her life Julien has battled against
her own mind and body.
She struggles with substance addiction, mentioning
at various points alcohol, drugs and cigarettes.
And she speaks of her deteriorated mental
health, which has led to self-harm.
Julien paints herself as someone who spends
more time in a hospital bed than a church
pew.
She feels at odds with her own body, comparing
it to dirty clothes and dilapidated furniture.
The album title itself is a reference to an
injury that prevents you from moving forward
and represents Julien’s perceived weakness
of her own flesh - a common thread throughout
the New Testament.
But it’s in this weakness that she seemingly
feels the closest to God.
Her picture of Jesus is the one who spends
time with the poor, oppressed and suffering,
not the holy and righteous.
Suffering and redemption go hand-in-hand for
Julien, in much the same way it did for Jesus
on the cross.
She equates the two on the song Everybody
Does: ("Cause I'm interested, and our carpenter
is so elegant at placing splinters right beneath
my nails, where I cannot dig them out.")
While this is a grotesque image of the pain
she endures in life and attributes to God,
it also shares the same imagery as the crucifixion:
nails and splinters.
In the same way that Sufjan conflates personal
relationships with his faith, Julien places
her human expectations onto God.
(“You’re gonna run when you find out who
I am.”)
On its surface, Everybody Does reads like
a song about fearing rejection from a friend
or lover, but it’s this rejection and abandonment
coming from God that Julien fears; the same
abandonment Sufjan fears and received from
both his mother and Heavenly Father.
(“You’re gonna run, it’s alright, everybody
does.”)
Julien understands that in order for salvation
to occur, there needs to exist a brokenness
which requires divine intervention.
It’s from this dichotomy of pain and peace
that stems her on-and-off-again relationship
with God, and her response mirrors this.
On the track Rejoice the expressions of Julien’s
mind and body are released from her mouth.
Addiction through “choking on smoke”,
intimacy with God in “singing your praise”,
and spiritual disconnection when she “rejoices
and complains”.
But she finally realises that God is present
not only in her brokenness, but every aspect
of her life.
(“But I think there’s a God and hears
either way.”)
Julien now recognises that she doesn’t have
to be self-destructive and at her lowest in
order to feel close to God.
But habits are hard to break, and on the album’s
closer Go Home we find Julien in a familiar
position: succumbing to her addictions and
in a state of helplessness, having to ask
friends to come pick her up and take her home.
But in the second verse she switches from
talking to friends to talking to God, confident
that he is watching over her, regardless of
whether she’s feeling physically broken
or spiritually disconnected.
And in her last line of the album, she asks
God to take her Home - to Heaven.
(“I’m tired of washing my hands / God,
I want to go home.”)
The separation from God that Julien felt in
the album’s first line has been closed by
its final one, and she ends the album with
a rendition of a modern hymn, In Christ Alone
(my personal favourite worship song), while
a preacher delivers a sermon in the background.
Both Julien Baker and Sufjan Stevens are not
considered to be Christian artists; they are
singer-songwriters whose faith plays an essential
role in their music, and whose music is an
expression of worship.
As a Christian and lover of music myself,
I’ve always felt at odds with Contemporary
Christian Music, guilty that I struggle to
be moved by many worship songs when entirely
secular music has provided me with deep spiritual
experiences.
But albums such as Sprained Ankle and Carrie
& Lowell bring me closer to God in a way that
much Contemporary Christian Music doesn’t.
These are not airbrushed depictions of God
and uplifting statements of unwavering faith
- they are full of doubts, fears and insecurities,
honest accounts of people trying their best
and often failing.
Human stories and emotions that are relatable
to the spiritual and non-spiritual alike.
