Accidentally Lutheran lyrics: When a popular artist or songwriter, probably by pure accident, gives expression to the Christian faith in keeping with Lutheran confession.
Oh you’re so condescending, Your gall is never ending
We don’t want nothin’, not a thing from you.
Your life is trite and jaded, Boring and confiscated
If that’s your best, your best won’t do.
SONG: We’re Not Gonna Take It
ARTIST: Twisted Sister – Stay Hungry
YEAR: 1984
This mid-80s ballad has proven a timeless one in the rock-n-roll world. It draws on that familiar “stick-it-to-the-man” streak that has bridged countless generations, even centuries! From Robin Hood and his upstart peasants and the revolutionaries in Les Miserables to the Boston Tea Party or even some of the calls here in Texas for secession from the United States, this anthem manages to strike a human chord:
Oh you’re so condescending
Your gall is never ending
We don’t want nothin’, not a thing from you!
And that chord reverberates in our native (old Adam) religion, too. When our revolution-rich eyes are confronted with God visiting humanity in the helpless flesh of a baby, when our upstart ears hear of our Promised Savior idly enduring the affliction of the powers that be, our senses are thoroughly unimpressed (see Isaiah 53:3-4). It’s as if we join with Twisted Sister, with the sign-demanding Jews and the wisdom-clamoring Greeks (1 Corinthians 1:22) and say to God’s humble, afflicted, suffering Christ:
Your life is trite and jaded
Boring and confiscated
If that’s your best, your best won’t do.
The Devil and the world enlist our flesh to respond in revolt to God: “You’re so condescending!” And in His Incarnate Son, God-made-flesh, God the Father agrees. Yes, says the Father in Jesus His Son, I am stooping down to you. I am lowering myself to you – treating you as hopeless and helpless… because you are! Because nothing less will save you.
When the time was prime, God condescended to us – born of woman, born underneath His own law, to redeem the helpless and hopeless – you and me. He absorbed the Law’s accusations for you. He suffered its righteous punishment – death – for me (Galatians 4:4-5). In fact, God is so condescending that He’s still doing it this very day – stooping Himself down to us in the generous waters of Baptism, in the liberating words of absolution, in the life-giving nourishment of His Son’s body and blood under bread and wine. To our proud, upstart flesh, God as condescending is an accusation. But to Gospel-born faith, this condescending God is not an offense, but our bold confession. Luther invites the Christian to rejoice in this truth in the explanatory words to the 3rd Article of the Apostle’s Creed:
I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in the Lord Jesus Christ or come to Him.
But God condescends in the Good News that is Jesus, His Son.
But the Holy Spirit calls me by the Gospel, enlightens me with His gifts, sanctifies and keeps me in the true faith.
God IS condescending. His conception and lowly birth, His life in human flesh under His own Law, His suffering, His public humiliation, His dying: it’s all so very condescending of God… graciously so! It is the condescension of our salvation. The glory belongs to God and the comfort to you!
Reverend Kyle Madson
Managing Editor, The Lutheran Sentinel
Divine Mercy Lutheran Church
Hudson Oaks, TX