Song: “Open Your
Eyes”
Artist: Stryper
Album: Reborn
(2001)
Track: 1
I didn’t start listening to hard rock until I was in High
School, and so I unfortunately missed a great deal of Stryper’s popular
years. I’ve had to catch them mostly in
hindsight, and I’ve really liked the stuff I’ve heard. This one is a frequent go-to album for me,
especially when driving. From the first
track, it just starts going and really doesn’t let up very much.
And after all this time, I still don’t recognize much of the
lyrics, oddly enough. I guess I hadn’t
paid that close attention before. Of
course, this was well after the time in my life when I only had a few CDs, and
I played those until I knew every note.
There’s good and bad with having a lot of music on the iPod. The bad is that I don’t know the music as
well as I did the stuff from earlier in life.
Well, let’s get this show on the road!
The Problem
This song is a vivid description of the state of fallen man,
dead in trespasses and sin and a slave to sin.
The Bible is clear that we are slaves – a slave either to God or slaves
to sin (see Romans 6). Oddly enough,
what we tend to do is to suppress the truth in unrighteousness and pretend that
we are free.
Think about it. How
many unbelievers have you known that talk about Christianity as restrictive
stifling? The unstated assumption (and
sometimes stated one) is that being an unbeliever is freeing. Some even use the phrase “free thinker” for
secularists, which is actually one of the more ridiculous things they might
claim. Whether or not we recognize our
own chains, they are there. The
unbeliever is not free to be righteous.
He is not free from his sin. He’s
not free to love the truth. He’s chained
to his sin and his rebellion against God.
This song is about someone who fails to see the true
condition of his own soul, and it’s a good description. The urge here is to “open your eyes” so that
you can see what is actually happening.
The imagery used is quite good description of what is happening, and the
call to truth and life and light a good one.
The Solution
The thing we should note about the song is that the solution
is not explained very much. That’s okay,
we are dealing with the first song on an album here. We should see where the rest of this is going
before we get too upset about it.
But I am a little concerned that the song appears to have a
solution, taken by itself. And the
solution could appear to be just some sort of self-assessment of yourself and
circumstance to discover a way out. By
that way out, I’m assuming that the band is talking about Jesus, but the
interpretation of the song does not necessitate that.
Still, that’s a minor point, assuming we’re going somewhere
with this on this album. We’ll have to
go further to find out!
Overall
Good rockin’ song that is theologically mostly a description
of the condition of fallen man. Not at
all a bad way to open this album up.
