Can't Explain

I’ve had The Who song, “Can’t Explain,” on my mind for a while now. I’ve always been a Who fan, ever since I saw the movie “Tommy” when I was maybe 8 or 9 years old. I just looked it up to see the year, and it’s from 1975, so that would have made me nine. I remember I was at summer camp and they were taking us to see a movie, and we had our choice, but it was R rated I think – or maybe it was PG? But anyway, my sister had to call our parents to see if it would be ok for me to go. My sister and I went to summer camp together for a few years, and she’s six years older than I am, so we’d go to these camps where there were a wide range of ages and I’d always want to do what the older kids were doing. Tommy was definitely much better than the other movie whatever it was – I think it was probably some really little kid stuff and I was never into that. I was what you’d call precocious – I had brothers who were 10-16 years older than I was, and they never talked down to me – they treated me like a little adult my whole life. One of my brothers used to call me “Boss” from the time I was a baby. Other times he’d call me “Chief.”

I don’t know really why Can’t Explain has been in my head, except that I’ve been having some experiences with God’s faithfulness recently that have made me realize that I can’t explain Him at all. Just when I think I’ve got at least some part of Him figured out, He changes things up again and I’m left thinking as The Who song goes, “Got a feeling inside (can’t explain), it’s a certain kind (can’t explain), I feel hot and cold (can’t explain), yeah down in my soul, yeah (can’t explain). I said . . . (can’t explain), I’m feeling good now yeah, but (can’t explain).”

Jesus refers to us as His beloved. There is a relationship that He wants with all of us that is a very intimate one. He is all things for us – mother, father, sister, brother, husband – it’s a strange concept if you’re not able to think of yourself as a bride – if you’re a man for example it could be really odd to think of yourself as the bride of Christ, but that’s what He calls His church and those people who believe in Him. The church He calls His body too, and each one of us is a part of His body. Again, it can be a very strange concept if you’re not thinking spiritually and you’re thinking about things the way the world does.

The Song of Solomon is sometimes referred to as a picture of Christ’s love for us, and there is that to be found in it, but there’s more than that, just like there is always more with God. He’s always working on different levels and layers, unfolding new meaning for us at different times and stages of our life. For me now at this stage in my life, I read the Song of Solomon and I read it as a love poem, a very beautiful description of a story of love between a man and a woman. But there are moments when passages read like a love story that He is speaking to me, and others when I can hear it as His love poem to us all. 

Because God is able to move between the natural and the supernatural and show us how they are both equally real, a song like “Can’t Explain,” can take on all kinds of meaning. And The Who themselves, as a rock band, can take on all kinds of meaning. In looking up the lyrics to “Can’t Explain,” I found a website, http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/The-Who-Biography/4C41A05B591EA5B4482569770027471F, that talks about The Who, and people wrote in about how they feel about them, saying things about how they’re the greatest rock band of all time. I always thought that, and it’s nice to read that I’m not the only one. One person wrote about Roger Daltrey’s scream on “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” saying it was “the single greatest recorded moment in rock.” I’d have to agree – I always loved Roger Daltrey’s scream – my favorite one is probably in “Love Reign O’er Me,” just because I love that song, but “Won’t Get Fooled Again” is a great one too.

There’s power in music. It can lift us up or bring us down, give us strength or make us feel weaker. There have been studies done that show that supermarkets and department stores using different types of music can make us want to buy more or less. There’s a story that says that the devil was the choir master in Heaven before He was cast down, and though I don’t know where the basis of that story comes from, it’s true that there is music that is able to manipulate us in negative ways. But it’s not always Rock music that’s bad and Christian Gospel that’s great – there are songs in both sides that go to the opposite side, and that’s why we have to be so careful about what we listen to. The Who was a great band – they did a lot of drugs which was not good, but the reason that’s not good is that it weakens your power and skill and eventually can kill you. It’s definitely one of the lies of the enemy that we need drugs to have fun and be creative – he loves to tell that lie to people – and the songs that celebrate that kind of life are dangerous. But songs that talk about standing up for justice, standing out in a crowd, songs that talk about the confusion and vulnerability of youth, the need for love – those are songs that whatever form they come in can be coming from the mouth of God.

The thing that happens when people are doing a lot of drugs and partying is that separates us from the love of God – it’s not that God stops loving us – He’s loving us through whatever we do, and He’s just wishing that we’d stop if it’s not good for us. But drugs and alcohol put a screen, a film, a haze, between us and the Spirit of God. After I was born again I saw it as a way that we stifle the Spirit that is living within us. If you think about the Holy Spirit as being alive, and there is nothing more alive than the Spirit, then if that Spirit is living within us, and we’re drinking and doing drugs, then we’re suffocating Him. Would you like to live in a vessel that was full of things that made it hard to breathe? Drugs and alcohol also dull our mind and our senses. I’ll say it again – it’s a lie of the enemy that they make you more creative and more alive. They actually do exactly the opposite.

There’s a saying I’ve heard in church that the thing that people are trying to fill when they do things that are harmful to themselves is a hole the shape of Jesus. And I have to say that for me that’s true. I went around my whole life searching for something that I didn’t know what I was looking for, and I tried to fill that hole in me with all kinds of things and people. It was only when I was born again that the empty places inside me were finally filled – now even in a really tough day, I don’t need anything except for Him. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t other things and people I can love and care for – in fact, He gives me so much love and care that I have more to pour out to everyone and everything else. And when I’m feeling dry and parched, when I’m feeling weary and like I can’t go on, He comes and fills me again with more of His Spirit, He quenches my thirst with springs of life giving water that will never run dry.

“Can’t explain, I think it’s love, try to say it to you, when I feel blue . . . but I can’t explain (can’t explain) forgive me one more time, now (can’t explain)”. I can’t explain God. I know He's love, but it’s a love that I just can’t explain. And the most beautiful thing is that for each one of us it’s different, because for each one of us, He knows just what we need. It's almost like we can sing that song to Him and He can sing it right back to us - an upbeat chorus to our questioning lyric. We don't need to explain it, we just need to accept it.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan