The Living End: Raise The Alarm

If you walked down the street and asked a random person if they believed in God, chances are they would say yes. But what God? It seems no two Gods are the same. They all have different characteristics, different qualities, different personalities. If the God I believe in is really just a construct of my mind, do I really even need him in the first place?

Do I need to believe in God?

Raise the Alarm is the third single of The Living End’s 2008 White Noise album. Here’s a clip of them performing live at AC/DC lane.

In the name of the Father
The Son, and the Holy Ghost
I’m not concerned with religion
After all, it’s what’s inside that matters most

The Living End are taking the emphasis off God and putting it on us. It doesn’t matter if there’s a God or not. What does matter is how I act, how I live. God probably doesn’t exist anyway. He’s a made up concept. We don’t need him to show us how to live. Because deep inside my heart, I know what is right and wrong. I know what it means to be loving and sacrificial. I don’t need a fictional God with his arbitrary rules to tell me how to live.

It’s a very human centric way of looking at things. I’m the one who makes the rules, I’m the one who determines how I live. So let me get on with the job.

Which would be all fine and good. Except for one problem.

What if you’re wrong?

What if God does exist? What if there is a God who created all things? What if there is a God who knows what is best for you because he has a plan for his creation? What if there was one, absolute God? And what if he revealed himself to us?

God is not a made up concept. He has shown us that he exists. He has done this through his creation. Just look at nature and you can see evidence of a thoughtful, intelligent creator. But more importantly, he has revealed himself through both his word, the Bible, and through his Word, his son Jesus Christ.

Jesus is God himself. He came to earth as a human being, yet was also 100% God in nature. While on earth, he preached, he healed, and most of all, he died and rose again. He did all these things so that we may know our creator and that we may have eternal life with him.

I might not believe in regrets
But I believe in salvation

What kind of salvation does the song writer believe in? He must surely believe that we need to be saved from something. And he’s right. We need to be saved from our sin. We need to be saved from our selfish rebellion. But we can’t do it ourselves. Raise the Alarm implies that we can. That through our own efforts we can overcome our predicament and rise up strong and proud. That we can pull ourselves up.

But we can’t.

Our sin is so great that we would be forever stuck. Forever captive. Forever damned. But through Jesus, we can be saved. “Through Jesus we can be rescued. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions-it is by grace you have been saved.” (Ephesians 2:4-5)
This is a certainty. We can be assured that the one that does not fail or falter will look after us. Which is so much better than having to rely on someone fallible like myself.

Thanks to James for the article suggestion.