This powerful indictment of the human impulse to vanquish and dominate others appeared on the late Rich Mullins' 1993 classic, A Liturgy, a Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band.
It's hard to imagine such a courageous and overtly Christian critique of humanity's penchant for making wars, whether in neighborhoods, households, or among nations, being recorded by too many Christian recording artists today. Too often today's Christian contemporary artists bleed the reality out of their tunes, removing the Gospel's scandalous call for total surrender to and simple trust in Christ.
The Gospel--the good news of new and everlasting life for all who believe in Jesus with their whole lives--frees us from the lie of self-sufficiency that the devil has been telling us to take us away from a relationship with God, and so to eternally kill us off, since back in the Garden of Eden.
And it puts the lie to all notions that living like the Rock's or Vin Diesel's onscreen personas is anything other than a big, fat lie ending in death, eternal separation from God and others.
The kingdom of God brought to all who dare to surrender to Jesus belongs only to those with childlike trust in Christ. In it, the least in this world become the greatest and the greatest in this world are the least.
To be big and strong in Christ's kingdom, here now as much as in eternity, is to gain the strength given only to those honest enough to know that without Christ, we can't do any good thing, but that with Christ, we can do all things: from poverty to wealth and back to poverty again, from lowliness to fame and back to lowliness.
Wars may sometimes be necessary to protect others from the aggressive who think that preying on others make them "big and strong." (World War II comes to mind.)
But most human conflicts, at least at the interpersonal level anyway, would disappear if we would realize that God in human flesh, who led a sinless, perfect life, dying for a sinner like me, means I've got nothing to prove by being big and strong. Christ already proved our worth when He died on the cross you and I should have taken.
Still, we teach our kids to look out for number one, forgetting to tell them that Christ has done and is doing all the looking out we'll ever need if we'll just surrender.
Enjoy this amazing song, which sounds like it could have been recorded yesterday.
(In fact, I would love to hear people like Peter Furler, Steve Taylor, Lecrae, Andy Mineo, and U2 cover it today!)
[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]
Here are the lyrics, as provided by GooglePlayer:
Strong man strangle universe
He drown the stars
Blinded by the mission of a thousand wars
He fit and dominant
Not wonder why
He heed the battle cry
Strong man is survivor
He live to pound
Little wooden crosses in the bloody ground
He fit and dominant
He stand a chance
He not bound to circumstance
And the world keep on turning
And the sun keep on burning
And the children keep learning
How to grow up big and strong
How to grow up big and strong
Strong man take no prisoner
Favor no plea
He leave no gold in teeth of enemy
He fit and dominant
He rise above
He not have the word that mean love
And the world keep on turning
And the sun keep on burning
And the children keep learning
How to grow up big and strong
How to grow up big and strong
Strong man beat the plowshare
He forges sword
He take the flower and he curse the thorn
He crush the serpent
He bite the fruit
His hand is absolute
And the world keep on turning
And the sun keep on burning
And the children keep learning
How to grow up big and strong
How to grow up big and strong
How to grow up big and strong
How to grow up big and strong
How to grow up big and strong
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