Project Switchfoot: Ammunition

My ongoing (and doomed to failure) attempt to give my take on all of Switchfoot's songs.

Ammunition

Blame it on what you’ve been through
Blame it on what you’re into
Blame it on your religions
Blame it on politicians

We’ve been blowing up
We’re the issue
It’s our condition
We’ve been blowing up
We’re the issue
Our detonation
We’ve been blowing up
We’re the issue
We’re ammunition
We’re ammunition
We’re ammunition
We are the fuse and ammunition

I have no generation
Show me my motivation
One world one desperation
One hope and one salvation

Look what a mess we’ve made of love
Look what a mess we’ve made of love
Look what a mess we’ve made
We’ve got ourselves to blame
Look what a bomb we made of love

This song has never been my favorite musically, but as I've been listening through this album a lot recently, it's really grown on me lyrically. At this point in the album, as I discussed in my last post, Switchfoot has been exploring the discontent and dissatisfaction with life that seems to be so universal in this life. Everyone is searching for fulfillment, for something more, but we can never seem to find it. Why is that? What are we to do? How can we pull ourselves out of this and find true satisfaction?

In this song, Switchfoot emphatically answers those questions. You can't help yourself, you can't find true joy on your own, because you are the problem! It's not your circumstances or your background or your boss or your teacher or your mom or whatever else you might try to pin your problems on. Those things aren't what keep you from finding satisfaction. What keeps you from finding purpose and joy is you, yourself. We, as fallen human beings, are fundamentally broken and unable to fix ourselves. "We're the issue. It's our condition."

This is an area where Christianity stands in stark contrast with the philosophy espoused by the world. Christianity declares in no uncertain terms that man is evil to the core. This is not a popular doctrine, because people don't like it when you tell them that they're fundamentally evil. The popular view is that humans are generally good people, or if they aren't good they're at least neutral, blank slates.

I think that people who believe we are born good or born neutral just haven't spent much time around young children. I have been working at Mathnasium for the past few months, and I tutor a lot of young kids, like 4th grade and under. Let me tell you something about small children. They can be very cute and sweet at times, and they say funny things, but you know what else? Small children are pathological liars. They just are. As soon as they can speak and put together coherent stories, children will lie unless you teach them otherwise. They tell tall tales to impress you and they will say almost anything to get out of doing their work. Now, they are terribly bad liars, which is why we generally just overlook it and say "that's cute", because often time it is cute and hilarious, but the point is that, without being taught to do it, children just lie instinctively.

If you believe that you are generally a good person (and most of us, even if we wouldn't actually say this, think this in our hearts), then you're going to blame your dissatisfaction on other things, outside forces which are keeping you, a good person, from being happy. The Christian view, though, blows that up. Regardless of your nurture (what has happened to you in life), your problem is your nature (which is sinful and broken).

When The Times asked him the question "What's Wrong with the World?" G.K. Chesterton famously replied with this letter:

"Dear Sirs,

I Am

Sincerely yours, G.K. Chesterton"

This is the essence of what Switchfoot is saying in Ammunition. This world is screwed up because we are screwed up. We are the problem, and if we don't see this, we're never going to find the solution that we're all desperately searching for. One thing is certain, if we're the problem, we certainly aren't the solution. There's this idea out there that we're all pretty good people, and if we'd all stop fighting about things (mainly religion) and just love each other, this world would be a better place. That's all well and good, until you, like the song says, "look what a mess we've made of love." If you look at love in this world, it's not like it paints a pretty picture. There's a reason why the saying "you only hurt the ones you love" exists. We stink at loving people. We aren't able to do it right, no matter how hard we try. We're the issue, and "love" isn't going to solve the problem.

So what are we to do? What is the solution? As the song says, we have "One world one desperation, one hope and one salvation." There is only one hope for this desperate world, and it's the salvation granted by Christ. He comes to answer the great problem of our condition and our inability to help ourselves. It's this salvation that Switchfoot will expound on in future songs. They've addressed the unrest and discontent in the world, and now they've diagnosed the problem. We'll see in future weeks where they go from here.