history, culture & depravity

A song that has always really impressed me is Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire," which chronicles over 100 historical and cultural events, people, things, and places from 1949 to 1989. It's amazing that he can pack all of them into a five-minute song and still have a good tune to go with it. For more detail on the events, click here.

As I've listened recently to the song, the chorus especially jumps out to me: "We didn't start the fire / It was always burning since the world's been turning / We didn't light it, but we're trying to fight it." It reminds me that we live in a broken world, and everybody knows that things aren't how they should be. The only long-term answer is Jesus, and his people are called to work to extinguish suffering in the world around us. Though we're tempted to retreat from the world and the culture because of the pain and the dirt and the challenge, Jesus calls us to engage in the fight against evil and destruction until he comes again.

Below you'll find a good video that chronicles the events in the song.