While you hit all-time low, you uncover its one perk: there’s nothing left to be afraid of. From the vantage level of that valley, life and loss of life could seem a matter of indifference. It’s with restoration that worry returns. Clawing your means out of the valley teaches you simply how straightforward it’s to slide again in.
“I thank God day-after-day… However I do know the issues He provides me He can take away.”
It’s on this precarious level that Benson Boone’s track, “Stunning Issues,” locations us. This can be the track that skyrocketed Boone to worldwide fame—by some counts it was essentially the most performed track of 2024—but it surely doesn’t inform the story of a hovering star awaiting a crash. Somewhat, the track’s protagonist has arisen from all-time low however is terrified he’ll backside out over again.
Boone (together with Evan Blair and Jack Lafrantz, additionally credited with the track) tells this story in phrases which are plumb easy. You may overhear any of those phrases within the checkout line at Salvation Military:
For some time there, it was tough
However these days, I’ve been doin’ higher
Than the final 4 chilly Decembers
I recall
The protagonist appears to be like again at a four-year tough patch, the “chilly Decembers” suggesting not solely seasonal temperatures however seasonal melancholy and lonely Christmases previous. These years of household estrangement are behind him, since he goes on to say that he sees his “household each month” and has “discovered a woman (his) mother and father love.” No matter this tough patch was, these traces trace that maybe his earlier girlfriend(s) weren’t of a lot assist and his household is relieved he’s lastly courting a great affect.
Issues are trying up, so he responds by thanking God for his new lady. However his prayers are much less motivated by pleasure than worry: “I thank God day-after-day… However I do know the issues He provides me He can take away.”
Themes of religion usually are not overseas to Boone’s music. One hears of going to church (“Within the Stars”), loving Jesus (“Sluggish It Down”), promise rings (“Sugar Candy”), and different such echoes of his upbringing within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. However in contrast to these extra generic references to religion, the road that what God provides he can take away alludes particularly to the E-book of Job.
Job, too, went by means of a tough patch. After receiving the information that each one of his livestock (some 1,100 sturdy), his servants, and his ten beloved youngsters have been destroyed,
Job arose, and hire his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the bottom, and worshiped, and mentioned, Bare got here I out of my mom’s womb, and bare shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the identify of the Lord (Job 1:20–21 KJV).
However in “Stunning Issues,” Job’s phrases usually are not discovered amid the 4 chilly Decembers, however when issues are on the upswing. The protagonist’s scenario is much less just like the struggling all through the center of the E-book of Job than the restoration at its finish, when God restores Job’s fortune (now 2,200 animals) and household (a contemporary set of 10 children). However how does Job really feel when his fortune is restored? Is he overflowing with aid and elation? Or has his prosperity returned with a brand new aftertaste? Now he is aware of simply how simply God can take what he has given, and that with no discover (Job isn’t supplied a window into God and the Devil’s heavenly face-off). Job has realized one thing in regards to the stunning issues he has regained—simply what ephemeral, precarious issues they are surely.
Boone’s protagonist is a bit much less involved with livestock, as his major squeeze will get prime airtime for what he’s “terrified” of shedding. However it’s not simply her he’s apprehensive about:
I discovered my thoughts, I’m feelin’ sane
It’s been some time, however I’m findin’ my religion
If every part’s good and it’s nice
Why do I sit and wait ‘til it’s gone?
Alongside renewed concord along with his household, his restoration has restored his psychological well being and religious life. Now he has “peace” and “love.” So when his lady stays the night time and he thinks he “might need all of it,” it’s not merely a press release of her significance. He needs to maintain his stunning lady, but in addition these “stunning issues” like his sanity, household concord, and relationship with the God he prays to.
However he’s afraid. Afraid that if she goes, these stunning issues will observe. That’s why the track’s refrain morphs from pleading along with his girlfriend into praying to God:
Please keep
I need you, I want you, oh God,
Don’t take
These stunning issues that I’ve acquired
If God takes what he has given, he’ll lose his lady, his household, his thoughts, even his religion. He’s not so certain he received’t “curse God and die” (Job 2:9).
I didn’t develop up listening to pop music. Publish-classical minimalism? Examine. Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms? After all. Tuvan throat singing? The soundtrack to my junior yr in faculty. So it’d sound odd for me to speak about “discovering” a pop sensation like Benson Boone. However as somebody who doesn’t take heed to the radio and customarily tunes out the background music at Staples, it was certainly a discovery for me in the way in which that your pal found Sigur Ros or AnnenMayKantereit (although maybe a bit much less smugly).
It additionally could also be unsurprising {that a} track about shedding what we love speaks to what Jonathan Haidt calls “the anxious technology.”
It began with asking myself, “I ponder what music is fashionable proper now?” As I didn’t know, I searched. Spotify answered, “Stunning Issues.” I used to be amazed. This fashionable track has some tooth. I used to be moved. You maintain your curly-haired four-year-old, give it a hear, and simply see what occurs to your eyes. And I used to be curious. Why is this the track that’s topping the charts? A track in regards to the terror of shedding what you’ve acquired?
Benson Boone struck me as a Gen Z singer with a predominately Gen Z viewers. This instinct was confirmed once I realized he grew his preliminary following on TikTok. Teen women are a significant demographic at his live shows—no shock there. It additionally could also be unsurprising {that a} track about shedding what we love speaks to what Jonathan Haidt calls “the anxious technology” (with TikTok accountable in Haidt’s view).
Gen Z are additionally positioned at a precarious level. On the one hand, they’re the beneficiaries of an period of relative peace and prosperity. World wars? The Despair? Getting drafted? 9/11? Historic historical past. But suburbia is now not the bubble it as soon as was.
Rising up with a sensible telephone teaches you that peace and prosperity are somewhat erratically distributed. Alongside curated pictures of opulence, you’re greeted day by day by apparitions of famine, abuse, and warfare. The previous a long time have seen the erosion of public discourse, increased suicide charges, and rising mistrust of our public establishments and our neighbors. The faults within the basis laid by earlier generations appear poised to carry down our academic, governing, and spiritual establishments. “Deconstruction” is now a longtime member of the Christian lexicon. Ours is a second low on optimism. Maybe “Stunning Issues” speaks to such a second. A time once we’re “up at night time thinkin’ [we] simply may lose all of it.”
But maybe Boone has not solely touched our second’s fears however tapped into our hopes. An argument might be made that at its roots “Stunning Issues” presupposes each God’s goodness and his sovereignty: each stunning factor is considered one of his presents and it’s his enterprise which presents we maintain and which we return. Nevertheless, Boone’s track finds no consolation in depicting God as a kindly father who loves to present good presents to his youngsters. But on the identical time, Boone’s protagonist nonetheless hopes in opposition to hope: he prays. No matter concepts the track implies about God could also be much less important than the truth that the core of the track is addressed to God.
Which brings us again to Job. Whereas the start and ending chapters of Job are preacher-approved, many of the ebook is a protracted dialog between Job and his less-than-helpful buddies (Job 3–37). Job’s place is that he’s righteous—if he might simply get a date on the calendar earlier than God, he could be vindicated. His buddies’ place is that Job’s struggling signifies that Job will need to have sinned—God isn’t unjust, is he?
On the finish of the day, Job’s righteousness appears to lie in the truth that he seeks God, even when he hopes in opposition to hope.
When God finally exhibits up, he doesn’t reply the perennial questions which preoccupied Job and his buddies. As a substitute, he asks if Job was there when he created the world (Job 38) and lists a venerable menagerie of animals (Job 39–41). After this encounter, Job “repent(s) in mud and ashes” (Job 42:6). God then turns his sights on Job’s buddies and says He’s indignant with them as a result of—because it’s sometimes translated—“you haven’t spoken of me what is true, as my servant Job has” (Job 42:7 NRSV).
However this assertion poses an interpretive downside. Didn’t Job simply repent for saying issues that he “didn’t perceive” (Job 42:3)? Is Job proper when he calls God “merciless” (Job 30:21) and says God hates him (Job 16:9)? And don’t Job’s buddies say some true issues about God, even when they’ve misapplied them? Consequently, some biblical students have noticed that a greater translation could be that God is indignant “as a result of you haven’t spoken to me steadfastly as my servant Job has” (my translation). On this studying, the distinction between Job’s theology and his buddies’ has much less to do with its content material than its route. Job’s buddies discuss about God. Job talks (complains principally) to God. On the finish of the day, Job’s righteousness appears to lie in the truth that he seeks God, even when he hopes in opposition to hope.
Once I was curious why “Stunning Issues” rose to worldwide fame, it wasn’t simply because the track is a private apocalypse of doom and gloom. I used to be curious due to its route: “I want you, oh God. Don’t take these stunning issues that I’ve acquired.”
After a long time of pop anthems telling us we simply want to affix fingers, pull collectively, and construct a greater tomorrow, maybe we’re prepared for a brand new hope. A hope that appears not round to humanity’s collective goodness and never inside to our deepest self, however with out. Not hope born from optimism, however desperation. Hoping in opposition to hope that God will present up after 35 chapters of arguing, shut us up, and set the file straight. Hoping we’d say with Job, “I’ve heard of thee by the listening to of the ear: however now mine eye seeth thee” (Job 42:5 KJV). In an period when our prosperity and establishments appear so fragile, my hope is that we’d start searching for one thing with extra endurance.
I want you, oh God.
We want you, oh God.
