You Have to Learn How To Die If You Want to Be Alive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr161wKdkyw

“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” Matthew 16:25

This song is one of my all time favorite versions of  Jesus’s straight up command that we have to lose to win, we have to die to live. What makes it so powerful is that Tweedy – who is not a preacher but a rock and roll star – seems to intuit the fact that dying to ourselves is not a strategy through which to rid the world of war. It is simply how we live in obedience to Jesus for no other reason other than that it’s what he taught us to do. Incredibly, Wilco sets about, at around 3:00 into the video, to kill their own song. If you see this performed live, the outro will go on for a couple of minutes while they just destroy any trace of music… they kill their own song (symbolically). It’s brilliant.

Anyway, my word for today is this: if you want to be alive, your soul has to learn how to sing this song.

It’s a war on war
It’s a war on war
It’s a war on war
There’s a war on

You’re gonna lose
You have to lose
You have to learn how to die

Just watching the miles flying by
Just watching the miles flying by
You are not my typewriter
But you could be my demon
Moving forward through the flaming doors

You have to lose
You have to learn how to die
If you want to want to be alive, okay?

You have to lose
You have to lose
You have to learn how to die
If you want to want to be alive

You have to die
You have to die
You have to learn how to die
If you want to want to be alive, okay?