Maybe you think he’s not accusing himself enough yet? Remove the speck, FRiend.
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No. Just think he shouldn’t have written a song that makes it sound like the young man died from a car accident that no one saw coming and could have done something about.
Dang. That wasn’t the response I expected. Are adult conversations allowed here anymore? The lyrics ask God why he took his son away. Did you read what the young man had in his system? God didn’t take him or anyone else in that situation. And a situation that bad doesn’t sneak up on anyone. I lived the speck, my FRiend. And I dealt with it as I explained. With confrontational, tough love. Not blinders and not thinking it would go away without interaction. And I’ve seen it dealt with by others much differently with sad results. And I will continue to speak up rather than sing Kumbaya if I feel it is the right thing to do.
The speck I refer to is your indignant lecture.
You have judged the words of his still-raw grief as wrong, yet complained to me because I disagree with the harshness of your opinion.
It mattered so much to you that I, who have loved his music for decades, feel compassion for his loss as one parent to another, that you came back to assure me you are right! and that I must understand that he is wrong!
Looks like we disagree about that.
If any grown child of mine ended up dead from improvident choices without actual intent to kill himself, I might also be in a state of profound shock bordering on denial. The last thing that would increase my understanding is a pecksniffian lecture about how my first, horribly mournful elegy is theologically incorrect.
Give Toby Mac’s Christian audience credit for understanding the wild passion of grief. Any Christian parent would also be grappling with guilt; yet his son was a grown man; and as the lyrics also indicate, his son had admitted that he was “prodigal,” and had promised to reform; but he failed. Turns out he was imperfect — a miserable sinner like the rest of us.
If you have never been the family member of an addict (as I have been), you perhaps underestimate how grossly futile it is for the family to try to accomplish the addict’s recovery — only the addict can do that. And there are many drivers of addiction, including biochemistry, that are not attributable to poor parentlng. Yet you’ve piled on without really knowing what they’ve been through.
Have a little compassion for a grieving father. As the lyrics indicate, he knows he has barely begun; yet has four other children to support, one of whom is profoundly disabled, and needs to keep working. His gospel singing is his work. Who of us works perfectly at all times?
His grief will never be finished, and his theology and understanding of what went wrong with his son will mature over the years, but as a performing gospel artist, this is his just his initial response. If you weren’t a fan already, just don’t listen for his growth of understanding over the years to come, if you’re afraid it will never be good enough for you.