The Temptation of Adam

Because I don't quite know enough html to link to a page in the comment section, I thought I'd put some requested information here.

I wrote this about the song The Temptation of Adam last month:

The Temptation of Adam, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to See the World.

I consider one of my greatest successes on internship to be learning the lyrics to the song “To the Dogs or Whomever” verbatim. “To the Dogs or Whoever” is the opening track from Josh Ritter’s 2007 album The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter. It was no easy feat, but in 6 minutes increments (the time it took me to get from my apartment to the church), over months of sustained discipline, I can now sing the song on command. Think Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” meets hyper-literate narratives complete with historical, biblical and fictional images.

Josh Ritter grew up Lutheran. Baptized and confirmed, he grew up in Moscow, Idaho and cut his teeth in singing, songwriting and playing his guitar in Lutheran summer camps. His Lutheran identity is heard in his lyrics, most notably with his awareness and understanding of the keys of the kingdom in the songs “Girl in the War” (“because the keys to the kingdom got locked inside the kingdom”) and “Thin Blue Flame” (“If what’s loosed on earth will be loosed up on high/It’s a Hell of a Heaven we must go to when we die") from the 2006 album Animal Years.

Ritter and The New Pornographers were constant companions for me while on internship. Perhaps an apology for The New Pornographers ought to fit in this issue, one on adultery and sex, but they’re name is nothing more than a response to a 1950s pamphlet by Jimmy Swaggart stating that rock ’n’ roll is “the new pornography.” (Magnet, October 13, 2005). But no, I’ve been dreaming about the song “The Temptation of Adam” also from The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter for this particular issue.

The lyrics tell the love story:

If this was the Cold War we could keep each other warm/ I said on the first occasion that I met Marie/ We were crawling through the hatch that was the missile silo door/ And I don't think that she really thought that much of me/ I never had to learn to love her like I learned to love the Bomb/ She just came along and started to ignore me/ But as we waited for the Big One/ I started singing her my songs/And I think she started feeling something for me

We passed the time with crosswords that she thought to bring inside/ What five letters spell "apocalypse" she asked me/ I won her over singin’ "W.W.I.I.I."/ And we smiled and we both knew that she'd misjudged me

Oh Marie, it was so easy to fall in love with you/ It felt almost like a home of sorts or something/ And you would keep the warhead missile silo good as new/ And I'd watch you with my thumb above the button

Then one night you found me in my army issue cot/ And you told me of your flash of inspiration/ You said fusion was the broken heart that's Lonely's only thought/ And all night long you drove me wild with your equations

Oh Marie do you remember all the time we used to take/ Makin’ love and then ransack the rations/ I think about you leaving now and the avalanche cascades/ And my eyes get washed away in chain reactions

Oh Marie if you would stay then we could stick pins in the map/ Of all the places where you thought that love would be found/ But I would only need one pin to show where my heart's at/In a top secret location three hundred feet under the ground
Oh we could hold each other close and stay up every night/ Looking up into the dark like it's the night sky/ pretend this giant missile is an old oak tree instead/ And carve our name in hearts into the warhead

Oh Marie there's something tells me things just won't work out above/ That our love would live a half-life on the surface/ So at night while you are sleeping/ I hold you closer just because/ As our time grows short I get a little nervous

So I think about the Big One, W.W.I.I.I./ Would we ever really care the world had ended/ You could hold me here forever like you're holding me tonight/ I think about that great big red button and I'm tempted

I’d be remiss if I failed to mention the correlation to Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film “Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb,” in which a mentally AWOL Air Force General, aptly named Jack D. Ripper, sets in motion a nuclear attack on Russia, who are threatening to pollute the precious bodily fluid of Americans. This attack sets off the doomsday device and annihilates the world, all to the soundtrack of “We’ll Meet Again,” by Vera Lynn).

In this song Adam learns to love the bomb by being infatuated with Marie in attempt to keep her for his own keeping. Beyond the explicit love song, Ritter zeros in on the temptation to avoid the world, buffering oneself from all that is outside and bad by preoccupying oneself with all that is good; in Adam’s case, with undistracted love. But the sheltered life is not a full life. “Ritter quietly revels in the simplicity of the end times, acknowledging that his romance would crumble if it weren't unfolding in isolation. In the process, he learns that he doesn't so much mind the world's annihilation, provided he gets to hold someone when it happens” (NPR, “The Bright Side of the World’s Annihilation,” Sept 4, 2007).

Whether it be love or “precious bodily fluid,” trying to protect the thing by destroying what’s external to it leads to its own destruction. Searching for peace by creating war, exporting democracy by attempting despotism and touting security while stripping freedoms all lead towards the destruction of those things that we hold so dear.

I wonder about those things we feel we need to uphold as if they would fall away without our safekeeping. We fight to preserve and protect God’s Spirit by demanding it works in one way but not another, though we believe John’s words that the wind blows where it chooses; we define church as buildings and statistics and measure growth in numbers, though it is where the word is preached and the sacraments given; we keep people from hearing the gospel when we bind it with rigid rules for its correct proclamation, though it is Christ’s own Word in our own words that creates faith and brings new life.

Peace is our profession.



Of course the last line "peace is our profession" is from the movie and was itself the slogan of the old Strategic Air Command, America's nuclear deterrent.


You can read this and the rest of the Concord here.