What does this song mean?

[Mave]

Hi, everyone...

Heard this when I was younger but I still don't really understand the point of the song. Opinions? Ideas? Is this person with, against or neutral about Christianity? I partially think this sounds like a man who used to be believed, got disappointed and no longer follows Christianity...but I could be wrong.

Crown of Thorns by Johnny Hates Jazz

You were yesterday’s hero
An ordinary man of flesh and blood
Took the world on your shoulders
A hopeless crusade, and act of love

But it’s a world obsessed with religion
And now you wear the face of a god
Like the words you said, you’re as good as dead
Just a work of art on the wall

And that’s why nobody wears a crown of thorns
Nobody cares
Nobody wears a crown of thorns anymore

Holy men talk of hunger
While standing beneath a cross of gold
And there are preachers on the tv
In their thousand dollar suits, who sell your soul

To think you died for what you believed in
Only to be exploited and used
Now you’re supermen from the promised land
Just a vision of hollywood

...anymore

You showed me that there’s hope for humanity
But once more you’re being betrayed

So many countries torn by their idols
Too many prophets screaming for blood
And they only hear what they want to hear
When it comes to God up above

[TheMelodyMaker]

The words of this song remind me of John MacArthur's DVD sermon series called "Does the Truth Matter Anymore?" in which he preaches mainly on 2 Timothy 4:1-5...

1 I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and dead at His appearing and His kingdom: 2 Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. 3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; 4 and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. 5 But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

The part of the song that really caught my attention was the second-to-last line: "And they only hear what they want to hear". It reminded me of verses 3 and 4 in the above passage; people who reject the gospel message will look for false teachers who will tell them what they want to hear. In fact, after looking through it again, I think that this is just what the whole song is saying.

Does that help you out? Or am I way out to lunch on this?

[uc pseudonym]

The song feels to me very, very Christian, reminiscent of Steve Taylor's lyrics. That is, it would, except for the initial two verses.

You were yesterday’s hero
An ordinary man of flesh and blood
Took the world on your shoulders
A hopeless crusade, and act of love

But it’s a world obsessed with religion
And now you wear the face of a god
Like the words you said, you’re as good as dead
Just a work of art on the wall

Those change the song, twisting it to something else completely. Unless I misunderstand both of these critically, this is defacing Jesus's divinity. That changes the song from a lament of the world's fallenness to a bitter rant. A shame really. But the most powerful lies are those mixed in among truth.

[Technomancer]

I think the song goes beyond saying that people aren't hearing Christ's message because they don't want it. The song is primarily attacking putative Christians who obscure the message of the Gospel by how they live. Christ for them has become an emblem of merchandising. Greed is good and greed is god. In this, His message of the Church as a serving community is drowned out, as is humility, mercy and compassion. At the same time, the songwriter is attacking those who use the cross as a club, the symbol of the prince of peace used to justify war and oppression.

We do hear what we want to hear in the Bible, but is we Christians who are hearing it. I think you're right that the writer isn't a Chrisitian, primarily because of his altogether justified view of how Chrisitianity is being used by certain Christians.

[Rashiir]

Hmm...yes...I hear songs all the time that sound Christian and could be interpreted that way...one I've been thinking of lately is "Bargain" by The Who:

I'd gladly lose me to find you
I'd gladly give up all I had
To find you I'd suffer anything and be glad

I'd pay any price just to get you
I'd work all my life and I will
To win you I'd stand naked, stoned and stabbed

I'd call that a bargain
The best I ever had
The best I ever had

I'd gladly lose me to find you
I'd gladly give up all I got
To catch you I'm gonna run and never stop

I'd pay any price just to win you
Surrender my good life for bad
To find you I'm gonna drown an unsung man

I'd call that a bargain
The best I ever had
The best I ever had

I sit looking 'round
I look at my face in the mirror
I know I'm worth nothing without you
And like one and one don't make two
One and one make one
And I'm looking for that free ride to me
I'm looking for you

I'd gladly lose me to find you
I'd gladly give up all I got
To catch you I'm gonna run and never stop

I'd pay any price just to win you
Surrender my good life for bad
To find you I'm gonna drown an unsung man

I'd call that a bargain
The best I ever had
The best I ever had

" I'd pay any price just to win you
Surrender my good life for bad
To find you I'm gonna drown an unsung man"

kinda kills it, though I think...

[shooraijin]

Plus the whole Keith Moon thing sort of sinks that theory as well ... anyone catch Roger Daltrey on the History Channel as a commentator for 'Extreme History'? Eeeeeeeeek.

I have a number of songs I've been itching to cobble into an 'unintentional witness' playlist. Chief among them is 'The Eagle Will Rise Again' by the Alan Parsons Project and 'Testify' by Parliament (George Clinton's band before he formed the P-Funk All Stars).

p.s.: best Who song ever -- 'Going Mobile' from that same album.

[Zilch]

Well, I see a conflict here. First the author is complaining about how people tend to forget Jesus except to swear and make movies and junk like that, and then "you're as good as dead?" I see the pain of a person that is disillusioned by spiritually dead Christians that have no fire in them. Anyway...that's my say...

[shooraijin]

Where would you say the conflict lies, though? I think the ideas of the world forgetting Jesus except for certain situations, and the fact that 'you [the subject]'re good as dead' (presumably due to being irrelevant as a result), jive well together.

If you mean the conflict of the actual lyricist in observing people like this, then, yeah, I see your point.