Ben Folds Five - Philosophy

"I see that there is evil
And I know that there is good
And the in-betweens I never understood
Would you look at me I'm crazy
But I get the job done
I'm crazy but I get the job done"

So as I continue with my 'Naked Baby Photos' theme I move onto what is probably Ben Fold Five's second most famous song a video of which is included when they performed it on the Jools Holland show.

As you may expect from a song called philosophy it is no surprise that this song provides an insight into what I assume is/was Ben Folds view of the world which resonates so much with the world we live in. 

Ben Folds has little time for idealistic sentiment and so in this song we have a view of morality which is deeply practical and probably most of us can relate with.

We see evil in the world - So we click the news on and we see 'evil' - murder, war etc - Whatever fits in your category of evil.

We also know that there is good - We see in our life real love, real affection - Whatever fits in this category.

So we acknowledge we live with this confusing world. It is goodness and evil all mixed together

The question is why is the world sop confusing? Why do we live in a world of irrational goodness and irrational evil? I have always found the Bible's answer to this compelling. The Bible says that God made the world and it was good - so the world will always contain goodness which we will see. But on the flip side the Bible also says that we rebelled against him and ever since then evil has come into the world and so we see goodness but the goodness is no longer perfection and so it is goodness tempered by evil. What we see in the world I see in myself. I see goodness and I see evil.

Ben Folds does not have a Christian world view and so his response is telling. He sees evil, he know's that there is good so what does he do... Well he get's the job done. This is the story of most of our lives. We see evil and goodness, we see a confusing crazy world, we can't quite work it out and so what do we do? Well we crack on. We get our heads down and we get on with life. In the words of Ben Folds 'Won't you look at me I'm crazy but I get the job done'. In a confusing world why try to make sense of it? Just get on with the stuff you have to do.

Jesus gives us a different option. Instead of ignoring the craziness of the world we live in we can look straight at it in the knowledge that we live in a good but broken world  for which redemption is possible. We don't have to ignore the mess because the story of the Bible is that God has a plan to sort it out.