Yeah, I know church isn’t usually the first thing that comes to mind when I listen to Tom Petty (actually it’s usually that image from the “Don’t Come Around Here No More" video in which Alice has been turned into a cake and is being eaten by the partygoers at the Mad Hatter’s un-birthday gala), but somehow the song “Listen to Her Heart” really struck me yesterday as a perfect picture of how the story is presented in the Bible.
No, really. I mean it.It was the chorus in particular:
She's gonna listen to her heart
It's gonna tell her what to do
She might need a lot of lovin'
But she don't need you
Even with all the rules and regulations and religiosity we Christians have built up around and through and within the common canon of writing typically referred to as the Holy Bible, those writings taken in total are simply one of the coolest love stories ever told. Ultimately it boils down to this simple plot.
(Disclaimer: This story could just as easily be told from the perspective of a female creator who created a groom, but I’m too lazy to type it twice. I wasn’t trying to maintain any stereotypes of the “woman ultimately as whore” that, believe it or not, some people actually try to use the Bible to support. But not me. Phew.)
A lonely creator decides to create himself a bride. That bride falls head over heels in love with him for a while, but eventually gets the urge to try other men.
But each time, after sharing the beds of others, she comes back home, and he takes her in again and lavishes his love on her. Because he knows something she doesn’t – he knows how the story ends, with her at his side, finally realizing she is his and he is hers (fated, one might say).
Still, she can’t resist the urge to stray each time some hunk of a boy-toy turns her head, and sure enough, she often ends up back in bed with another man, and eventually gets herself so deeply that she is taken as a whore and is sold into slavery.
So this lonely creator who wants nothing more than for her to love him back the way he loves her decides that the only way to prove it is to show her, and he offers not his money to buy her out of slavery, but his life, because he knows her price is far above any sum of cash. Only his love for her is too much to let him remain dead, and he comes back to let her know that never again will she have to be a slave. They can be together forever, and for a time she returns home.
Only, although her head is still easily turned, he told the truth – no matter what she does or who she sleeps with, she is safe from the slavers because her slave contract has been paid and destroyed forever and for good.
But here’s the kicker, even though it breaks his heart to know the she still wants to “see other people” from time to time, he knows that ultimately they’ll be together, just the two of them. Because he can see the future. (Some might even say he planned it in advance.) and he loves her enough to wait and let his heart get trampled on in the process.
So he waits -- and smiles inwardly despite his outward tears.
Now, with that story in mind, here are the rest of the lyrics (with hopes that I don’t get sued by Tom Petty for reprinting them here):
"Listen to Her Heart"
By Tom Petty
Copyright © 1977 Skyhill Pub. Co., Inc.
All rights reserved.
You think you're gonna take her away
With your money and your cocaine
Keep thinkin' that her mind is gonna change
But I know everything is okay
She's gonna listen to her heart
It's gonna tell her what to do
She might need a lot of lovin'
But she don't need you
You want me to think that I'm being used
You want her to think it's over
Can't you see it don't matter what you do
Buddy you don't even know her
She's gonna listen to her heart
It's gonna tell her what to do
She might need a lot of lovin'
But she don't need you
And you just can't creep up behind her
And you can't understand that she's my girl
She's my girl
She's gonna listen to her heart
It's gonna tell her what to do
She might need a lot of lovin'
But she don't need you
Petty has perfectly summed up my thoughts on the church at this point as the “bride of Christ.” She’s just a lover who can’t settle down… yet. But she’s like the proverbial diamond in the rough,” just waiting (without knowing it, often) to be polished to the jewel that she is inside.
Or to quote Petty:
You want me to think that I'm being used
You want her to think it's over
Can't you see it don't matter what you do
Buddy you don't even know her
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