CCM Edition.

December 06, 2016. Today we’ll be taking a look at “Through Your Eyes” by Britt Nicole which currently sits at #20 on 20TheCountdownMagazine.

Today’s song is completely lacking in substance. The song doesn’t make any attempt to share objective truth. This song is meant to convey a purely subjective, emotional experienced, direct-revelation supposedly from God the Holy Spirit. While I was tempted to simply dismiss this song as purely subjective fluff completely open to interpretation, there are a couple of statements that are false, so it earns a Disapprove rating here.

Music Video

There is another video with a short intro supposedly sharing the heart of the song.

Lyrics (via K-Love)

Verse 1
Get it together
That’s what I say to me
I put on the pressure
You could do better
Be who you’re supposed to be

But that’s when You came in
Right when I needed You
You said all of the things that I was believing
Not one of them were true

Pre-Chorus
You lifted my head up
I was keeping my head down
I didn’t know love
But I do now

Chorus
You stood right there and then You broke apart the lies
And You told me
I had something beautiful inside
You brought to life the part of me I thought had died
‘Cause You stood right there until I saw me through Your eyes

Verse 2
So this is living
So this is free
Not keeping score
Not anymore
Not since You rescued me

Bridge
You love me even when I fall apart
I can’t explain it, that’s just who You are
Don’t want perfection, You just want my heart

Discussion

Verse 1. The setup of the song is negative “self-talk”. While we could speculate Word of Faith (WoF) working in the background (Joyce Meyer, Beth Moore, Joel Osteen) at this point of the song what we have is more emotional than doctrinal. Some people are very hard on themselves. They hold themselves to tough standards. Sometimes out of pride, or out of despair. This first verse doesn’t give us any details, it’s just setting up the emotion of being disappointed in yourself. The song has not presented a context for this emotion. We don’t know if she is truly failing or if it’s just an emotional sensation of failure. We don’t know if her standard is Biblical, professional, ethical, moral… nothing.

Then we get the second part of the first verse, and we have someone enter in at just the right time. The vagueness of the lyric lends itself to being simply a boyfriend song, but if we’re going to give it a Christian context, then we need to treat the “You” as God. That actually makes this stanza worse, not better. The enemy here isn’t being presented as unbelief, just the singer being unfair to herself. An omnipresent God of the Bible just enters the singer’s life right when she needed Him. Interesting. If you listened to the singer’s intro to the second music video, we get the indication that this is some emotionally experienced direct revelation she got while she was already a believer. So, it’s not clear if she’s connecting this to salvation or just some sort of epiphany of life-change. Whatever this moment is supposed to be, what is sorely missing is objective faith. It’s not that she was reading God’s Word or listening to God’s Word being preached, she was just emotionally down and being hard on herself and apparently God shows up out of nowhere and tells her everything she believed was false. Such a statement cannot make sense intellectually… but for some reason we’ll eat this stuff up emotionally. Why? Well, we all want to hear how great we are despite how we view ourselves. It’s the original sin, the desire to be great. Adam and Eve were perfect, only denied the fruit of one tree in the Garden… and Satan tempted them to become like God. Incidentally, the song has made 2 statements that are not objectively false: “You can do better” and “be who you’re supposed to be”. The song isn’t looking to deal with any objective truths; rather, it is simply trying to convey something purely emotional. Maybe there were some false beliefs rolling around in her head that were indeed not true, but we aren’t given any insight into these. If she was already a believer at this point, then we know that some of her beliefs had to be Truth, so at best this is emotional hyperbole.

Pre-Chorus. We still have the singer as her own enemy. You lifted my head up I was keeping my head down. At this point in the song we’ve still not had anything specific enough in the lyric to discount it as a romantic boyfriend song. I didn’t know love but I do now. Well, that didn’t help bring any clarity on that point. If this is a spiritual song, then we’re still left wondering if she’s talking about saving faith, or if she’s really just singing about an emotional epiphany. Love is not an emotion, folks. While we do often associate a sense of euphoria with love, love is more than that. A love that is defined by the euphoria is empty and fleeting. Let’s take a break from this song for a moment and read how John taught concerning love.

1 John 4:7-16 (ESV)

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

John didn’t draw upon emotion to define Love, he drew upon the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the forgiveness of sins.

Chorus. So we have someone standing right there and breaking apart all the lies. What lies? We don’t know. But apparently the core message here is I had something beautiful inside. Are we sure this isn’t just a romantic boyfriend song? This is the message God is supposedly bringing to the singer, and the listener, that we have something beautiful inside? If we are trying to rescue this lyric, we might be inclined to hope that this line is a reference to God the Holy Spirit dwelling within us as a free gift of Faith in Christ Jesus. This line rolls right into the next line of You brought to life the part of me I thought had died. What is she talking about? Christ didn’t die on the cross to revive some dream destiny thingy inside of you… He died to save you from your sin. You weren’t just partly dead, you were all dead.

Ephesians 2:1-10 (ESV)

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

But it’s the last line of the chorus that really has me annoyed, ‘Cause You stood right there until I saw me through Your eyes. Dear Christian, the point and focus of the Scriptures, and of the Gospel, is Christ, NOT US. Our mirror in the scriptures is the Law, which exposes us of our sinfulness, our unrighteousness, our death. Christ came to bear the Wrath of God in our place, bearing our sin and unrighteousness upon His shoulders, and bestowing upon us His righteousness, by Grace alone, through Faith alone, in Christ alone, to the Glory of God alone. I would rather this song had been written about some human love interest. At least then its vagaries and emotional hyperbole and ultimate selfishness could be dismissed as puppy love.

Verse 2. Still no substance here, only a reflection on how life feels now after some undisclosed lies were destroyed, some undisclosed beliefs were proven false, and someone stood before her until she could finally see herself through someone else’s eyes. The song will loop back through the pre-chorus and then the chorus. No clarity of thought to be had.

Bridge. Ugh. You love me even when I fall apart. Well, yeah, otherwise it isn’t love. Definitely not Biblical love, nor God’s love. God loved you when you were dead in sins and trespasses. Dead. How could “falling apart” possibly compare to your condition when Christ bore the price of sin on the cross?
I can’t explain it, that’s just who You are. If you took the time to search the Scriptures you could at least preach who God has revealed Himself to be to the Apostles and prophets.
Don’t want perfection, You just want my heart. Not entirely true. The Holiness of God demands perfection. That is why the wages of sin is death. The whole “you just want my heart” trope sounds quaint and simple, but it is the Law of God, and we fall short of this, too.

Matthew 22:36-40 (ESV)

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

You don’t love the LORD with all your heart. I don’t. We fail this Law. We sin in this regard. We need forgiveness… we need a Savior, we need Jesus. Jesus fulfilled all of the Law and the Prophets, and then took our place on the Cross, so that we might be granted His righteousness and join in His resurrection.

Conclusion

For the most part, this song is just empty, emotional fluff. There’s nothing being taught Biblically, not even remotely. We aren’t being told what is wrong, or what lies are being exposed, and what little truth claims are being made in the song, they are objectively false. This song earns a spot on the Disapproved list.

Jude 24-25 (ESV)

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

In Christ Jesus,
Jorge