Introspection: There Is No Wonderwall

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

There Is No Wonderwall

Scripture:

Therefore, my loved ones... carry out your own salvation with fear and trembling. God is the one who enables you both to want and to actually live out His good purposes.

Philippians 2:12-13 (CEB)

But "happily ever after" fails

And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales

From "End of the Innocence" by Don Henley

One Tuesday evening a few years ago, I attended one of the Furman Wesley Fellowship's weekly meetings. I do not remember the topic of discussion for the evening, but I remember that we went off on a tangent when one girl mentioned the song "Wonderwall" by the British rock group Oasis. She suggested that the song could be understood in a spiritual light. I had never heard the song, and I did not really think too much about the discussion afterward. Not long ago, this particular song was brought to my attention again. When I went to my Bible study group's Halloween party, I watched three women play the video game "Rock Band" and saw them "performing" this very song. A few days after that, I heard the song on the radio.

I decided to purchase this song on the Internet, along with "Champagne Supernova," another song by the same group. What strikes me the most about "Wonderwall," aside from the beautifully haunting keyboard solo at the end, is the chorus.

Because maybe

You're gonna be the one that saves me

And after all

You're my wonderwall

I'm the type of guy who actually pays attention to song lyrics. In fact, if I listen to a song enough times, I will memorize the lyrics. Remembering what my friends said about "Wonderwall" a few years ago, I naturally decided to research the meaning of the song. I found that the song has a rather interesting story.

"Wonderwall," recorded in 1995, was written by the group's lead guitarist Noel Gallagher. He claimed in a 1996 magazine interview that the song was about his girlfriend.¹ The two married in 1997, but, around four years later, they divorced. After the divorce, Gallagher began to claim that "Wonderwall" was never about his girlfriend at all. He said, "It's a song about an imaginary friend who's gonna come and save you from yourself."²

At first Gallagher claimed that the words he wrote were for his girlfriend, but, years later, he claimed they were about "an imaginary friend," in other words, someone who doesn't even exist. Perhaps he was being truthful when he said that the song was never about his girlfriend, but I cannot help but read a certain disillusionment into this story. I cannot help but wonder if this artist came to a very painful realization in the years after he wrote the song.

This is a kind of disillusionment that hits very close to home for me.

I believe that many of us have fallen for a very flawed understanding of romantic love - an understanding that is as destructive as it is unrealistic. This sentiment is quite prevalent in our culture: we hear it in love songs and see it in romantic movies.

This particular line of thinking can been seen well in the 1996 film Jerry Maguire when the titular character, played by Tom Cruise, tells the woman he loves, played by Renée Zellweger, "You complete me."

Our culture leads us to believe that there is someone out there who will "save" us from something, "complete" us in some way, or bring us true happiness. It's only natural that we would want to believe this way because we are all painfully aware that we are flawed, imperfect, incomplete, fractured, and broken. Perhaps it could be said that sometimes romantic love is presented like a math equation.

We are taught by our culture that romantic love is a path to wholeness. We are led to believe that two people, when they fall in love, somehow complete each other in the same way that two halves equal a whole. Some people even refer to their significant others as their "better half."

What if romantic love is less like an addition equation, and more like a multiplication equation. After all, did God not say to Adam and Eve, "Be fruitful and multiply"?³

What if two broken people seeking completeness in each other do not make each other whole but rather leave each other feeling all the more fractured, broken, and empty?

I believe that many of us seek romantic love or marriage as a cure to all of life's problems. I have to admit that I am guilty of the same thing. I often feel lonely and insecure, and I keep hoping to meet a woman who will save me from my loneliness and prove to me that I have no reason to feel insecure about myself. The problem with this line of thinking is that, when two people build a relationship with each other, they bring their problems into the relationship with them. I wonder if so many people get divorced because the people they married were unable to meet their unreasonable hopes and expectations.

The problem is that we seek saviors instead of partners,

and that is way too much to ask of another person.

I think that romantic love and wholeness are both very good things to seek in life, but I also think that one should not seek romantic love as a means to achieving wholeness. If a person is not complete without a significant other, he or she will not be complete with one. Another person cannot save you, fix you, or make you whole. There are simply some things that must be worked out solely between an individual and God.

In my case, I need to take it to heart that finding a girlfriend will not solve any of my problems. If I feel isolated and insecure without a girlfriend, who's to say that I won't feel isolated and insecure with one. If anything, these problems have sabotaged my search for a romance: after all, people can smell desperation, and people know when you're needy. I must deal with my loneliness and insecurity apart from my search for a girlfriend.

I believe that the pursuit of romantic love is not a search for someone to make one complete but a search for someone with whom to share one's life. A marriage is not two people becoming whole with each other but two people pledging to share their whole lives with each other. I once heard my philosophy professor say that one cannot share one's life with another person unless one has a life to share. Marriage is about sharing all aspects of life: the better and the worse, sickness and health, wholeness and brokenness. Marital love, like all kinds of love, "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."⁴

In a marriage, when one person experiences brokenness, it is felt by both. One song that I think describes marital love well is "Her Diamonds." This song was written by Matchbox Twenty frontman Rob Thomas for his wife who suffers from an auto-immune disease. The song describes her struggles with the disease and his own struggles trying to comfort her and trying to be strong for her.⁵

By the light of the moon

She rubs her eyes

Sits down on the bed and starts to cry

And there's something less about her

And I don't know what I'm supposed to do

So I sit down and I cry too

And don't let her see

According to the song, when Thomas sees his wife in pain, he doesn't know what to do but to suffer with her. This is the literal definition of compassion.

We are all broken, and we all want to be made whole, but we cannot expect another person to achieve this for us. St. Paul writes that each of us must work out his or her own salvation with the utmost diligence - or, in his words, "fear and trembling." If you seek healing from your brokenness, I urge you to offer your brokenness to God. Please realize that I am not offering God as some pat answer. The journey to spiritual completeness - called sanctification by some - is long and difficult, but I do believe that God will lead us to healing and wholeness if we are willing to follow.

I like the song "Wonderwall." I like it not as a love song, but as a reminder that wholeness is not found in a companion but on a personal journey with God.


Notes:
1 - Wikipedia: Wonderwall (song)
2 - BBC News World Edition: "Noel: Wonderwall 'not about Meg.'" October 17, 2002.
3 - That was a tongue-in-cheek reference to Genesis 1:28.
4 - 1 Corinthians 13:7 (NRSV)
5 - Wikipedia: Her Diamonds


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