Something Beautiful Worth Saving

There’s a song by the band Life of Agony called ‘Broken Valley’. (you can you-tube it) In the strained delivery of it’s angst-ridden lyrics you can hear the echoing voices of almost an entire generation. Not just some brooding figures lurking in a seedy bar or some other shadowy corner of society, but rather almost all of humanity can relate in some part of their hidden selves. “Lift yourself up of that shelf, you’re not in this alone….. The Broken Valley’s a part of us all.”
At a time when more and more of us can sense the inevitable crumbling of the post-modern church, hearing such tidbits like, “just a sinner saved by grace” is sort of like being flicked in the ear by flying pieces of proverbial debris. Turns out we are so much more than that. We are wounded souls searching for a reason. With the blood stains still clinging to our weathered exteriors, we are wandering, straining for something real, some little speck of light in the blur of chaos and lies. When logic no longer over-rides the raw emotion that comes out of the ruggedness of human experience, then our pithy Christian answers no longer have a foothold. Not to down-play the gospel and the truth it reveals, but these are the questions blistering on our hearts… Let’s say it is true, that my soul is destined for eternal damnation and there’s only one person who can save me. Show me then that there’s something beautiful worth saving. Otherwise let me rot.
… And why Jesus? How does this fairy tale relate to my life? We live in an age where technology has provided us with a dozen different ways to connect to others at any given moment. Yet it seems we feel more disconnected than ever. So how can an invisible man form 2000 years ago be any easier to relate to? Sure, maybe he died, but it didn’t end suffering. Maybe he came back to life, but where is he now??? What does it have to do with us, today??? Nothing. Or perhaps everything. Perhaps the best is yet to be revealed. Maybe the only thing we can say now is that we know how it feels… to live inside this broken valley. Now we know how it feels to be kicked around, scoffed at, neglected, rejected torn apart and forgotten about. We know how it feels to live out of our pain, to see our wounds bleed. So now we can have compassion. We can FEEL compassion, and we can pick up a shovel and start digging our way out, or digging others out, because we know how it feels.
With that said, it’s still a matter of personal choice to dig, to believe there’s got to be something far better up ahead. Something outside of yourself that’s greater than yourself. Yet something that’s also ingrained in the fiber of your very being, and it wants to see us win. If we don’t at least have that to hold onto than we don’t have anything at all, and we might as well just give up.
Answers don’t come easily but they do come. Sometimes slowly, achingly, twisted, unsteady and almost unidentifiable. It’s up to us to adjust our lenses.
–Jess Salasin