My taste in music is pretty varied, I’d say. Forget about consistency when I’m riding in the car by myself; you’d hear everything from Anberlin and twenty one pilots (who are, in and of themselves, many genres) to RED and Flyleaf. One second, I’ll be doing my best Christine Daaé impression; the next, I’ll be trying to catch up to Andy Mineo’s million words a minute.
Pretty well demonstrating this concept is the fact that two of my favorite artists are Rob Thomas and Disciple.
They couldn’t be more different from each other sonically. In his standalone albums and his work with Matchbox Twenty, Thomas has written many thoroughly enjoyable pop-rock/alternative pieces, while the creativity behind Disciple is usually delivered by way of a blood-curdling scream from frontman Kevin Young. This musical diversity provides an interesting contrast, but occasionally their subject material overlaps – such as in their respective songs entitled “Someday.”
I’d say it’s a pretty common theme throughout humanity to know that the world isn’t what it should be. It’s also pretty common to look toward the future and hope that it’ll hold something better for us. Maybe not tomorrow, or next week, but someday, certainly… certainly things will be better, right? Both bands attempt to keep hope alive in their songs that look onward, looking for some kind of solace, but apart from the songs’ stylistic variations, there’s a pretty glaring difference that caught my ear and heart. Take a listen and/or read below.
Someday (Rob Thomas)
“And maybe someday / We'll figure all this out / Try to put an end to all our doubt / Try to find a way to make things better now and / Maybe someday we'll live our lives out loud / We'll be better off somehow / Someday”
Rob Thomas’s “Someday” is quite a catchy song; it’s got a decent melody, it’s in a nice and cheery key, and its dynamics are upbeat. The character that Thomas breathes into everything he produces just makes the song. And its lyrics are hopeful enough, right? They focus on the positive idea that maybe, somehow, someday, things will be better.
But then you hear Disciple’s song, and things start to change.
Someday (Disciple)
“Someday we will rise above the pain of this world / Someday the grave and death will lose their sting / There'll be no more tears and no more shame / And all our scars will fade away / Only love will remain, someday / Someday”
Disciple’s song speaks with such authority on the subject. There seem to be no “maybes” or “somehows” about it. “We will rise above.” “The grave and death will lose their sting.” “No more tears.” “No more pain.” Someday, sure; there’s no humanly way to know when. But they know how. And they know it’ll happen.
Disciple’s “Someday” also gives trials a purpose. Neither song fixates on the fact that life sucks, and Thomas does discuss negativity a bit in his verses, but Disciple encourages listeners to trust that good can come from their toil and their suffering.
As you may have guessed, the songs draw their hope from two very different sources.
A quick Internet search yielded nothing on Rob Thomas’s religion, but a listen to many of his songs can pretty definitively determine that he’s pretty secular – or, if he does profess some kind of faith, it’s nominal. At the very least, he’s writing songs from a secular perspective. His someday is the kind of someday that is projected forth in a movie where the characters are in the midst of an apocalypse, or a quickly crumbling dystopian society.
The kind of ambiguous, better someday that exists only in the minds of people who want to believe that their current situation won’t last forever. There’s no driving force behind it. There’s no one promising it to them. People simply believe in this someday because they can’t imagine living this way forever, or that their struggles are pointless. The responsibility to make anything better is entirely our own if we can even “figure out” a way to do that. Behind the upbeat tempo and the airy melody, the song’s hope simply crumbles under the weight of ambiguity and uncertainty.
Disciple, however, is well-known to be a Christian band, playing many Christian music festivals and evangelizing at every opportunity. In the Bible, God promises us a good many things about the future – that He will indeed rid us of our sorrows and wipe away our tears (Revelation 21:4) and that He has plans for us and that they’re for our good (Jeremiah 29:11).
This is the God that so perfectly designed and placed our planet as to support life; so precisely created the natural world and all of its astounding complexity; so recklessly loved humanity that He came into the world to display His love by dying to save it. Disciple’s someday doesn’t have a date on the calendar, but it’s a reality already; it’s the someday that the loving and wise parent promises to their child.
The child doesn’t know when, but they’ve already been told how. In the meantime, our struggles have purpose, as we’re told in Romans 8:17 and 18: “Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ if indeed we share in His sufferings in order that we may also share in His glory. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”
Both songs long for a better future. Both songs look onward in hope. But foundationless hope is no different from delusion. In Christ, we can know that outside of our own efforts, there is a good future that everything points to – everything, be it good or bad. Regardless of our struggles in this lifetime, a better someday is promised to us; it is a certainty. It’s all on Him – the perfect Creator and reckless Lover of our souls – and He’s been known to deliver.
