Easier Than Love

The band Switchfoot made a brave and responsible statement with their newly-found mainstream voice with some songs on their most recent album, Nothing is Sound. This is opposed to some bands **cough** Reliant K **cough** who seemed to lose their sense of purpose the more popular they got. Anyway, here's some lyrics from the song "Easier Than Love":

Sex is currency, she sells cars, she sells magazines.
Addictive bittersweet, clap your hands with the hopeless nicotines.
Everyone's a lost romantic since our love became a kissing show.
Everyone's a Casanova, come and pass me the mistletoe.

Everyone's been scared to death of dying here alone

She is easier than love,
Is easier than life,
It's easier to fake and smile and bribe.

So this song is very counter-culture in that it is a song that defaces VH1's sex and cheap intimacy and accuses it of being a distorted and counterfeit alternative to REAL love and intimacy. And I guess the most powerful line of the song is that middle one: "Everyone's been scared to death of dying here alone."

It's certainly true, and I think it's a fear that drives us, maybe all of us. It drives us to forego the real love, the real intimacy, which is hard, and to become addicted to the cheap, easy instant stuff: porn, MTV music videos, dirty jokes, pick-up lines, flirting, winking, sarcasm, making out, sex, and the like. Now, some of those things are very bad things. Others of them are really good things, but only in the right situation. In the wrong situation, they're a farce and a rip-off replacement of true, deep closeness that binds and protects.

A friend and I were talking last night and we realized that we're both addicted to cheap intimacy. We also came to the conclusion that neither of us know absolutely anything about real intimacy. Hmm. Something to pray about.