"Losing My Religion" is a song by R.E.M. and was released as the first single from the group's 1991 album Out of Time. Based around a mandolin riff, "Losing My Religion" was an unlikely hit for the group, garnering heavy airplay on radio as well as on MTV due to its critically acclaimed music video. The song became R.E.M.'s highest-charting hit in the United States, reaching number four on the Billboard Hot 100 and expanding the group's popularity beyond its original fanbase. It was nominated for several Grammy Awards, and won two for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and Best Short Form Music Video.
Michael Stipe told Rolling Stone magazine: "I wanted to write a classic obsession song. So I did." In addition to calling it a song about "obsession," Stipe has also referred to it as a song about "unrequited love" in which all actions and words of the object of your obsession are scrubbed for hidden meaning and hopeful signs. The lyrics pretty clearly support this: "I thought that I heard you laughing, I thought that I heard you sing. I think I thought I saw you try."
It's bigger than you
And you are not me
The lengths that I will go to
The distance in your eyes
Oh no, I've said too much
I've said enough
That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no, I've said too much
I haven't said enough
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try
Every whisper
Of every waking hour
I'm choosing my confessions
Trying to keep an eye on you
Like a hurt, lost and blinded fool, fool
Oh no, I've said too much
I've said enough
Consider this
Consider this, the hint of the century
Consider this, the slip
That brought me to my knees, failed
What if all these fantasies come
Flailing around
Now I've said too much
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try
But that was just a dream
That was just a dream
That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no, I've said too much
I haven't said enough
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try
But that was just a dream
Try, cry, why try
That was just a dream
Just a dream
Just a dream, dream
The song title is a Southern expression meaning "At my wit's end," as if things were going so bad you could lose your faith in God. If you were "Losing your religion" over a person, It could also mean losing faith in that person.
Losing my religion could also be true for many in UK churches. According to the last census in the UK 1000 people are joining churches every we but 2,500 are leaving. Sometimes I can feel the panic from the managers and leaders of Christian denominations or from those who govern church structures in the UK.
It must be internal terror as they see the statistics and hear the stories and scan the exit polls. Perhaps these same management people are desperately scrambling to do damage control for the fence-sitters, and manufacture passion from the shrinking faithful, perhaps they are trying in vain to persuade others to remain hopeful. Everyone is saying they know why people are leaving or losing their religion, but I'm not sure they do. I hear the same old rhetoric “the culture” is so lost, so perverse, so beyond help that they are all walking away. I think people in ivory towers believe that the exodus has come because church goes and followers of Jesus have turned a deaf ear to the voice of God; and have taken up chasing money, and sex, and material things. Church wake up and small the coffee these are not the real reasons. Yesterday I wrote about the early church and all that was being achieved all the purpose and passion that can be seen in the those early disciples. Today it's not the same, the passion is waning and the reasons that are given are false to say the least.
Dear church it's time to point out some of my own thoughts for the exodus and departure and to speak to you personally
1. Church......Your Sunday productions have worn thin.
The stage, and the lights, and the bands, and the video screens, have all just become white noise to those really seeking to encounter God. They’re ear and eye candy for an hour, but they have so little relevance in people’s daily lives that more and more of them are taking a pass.
2. Church.......You speak in a way no-one understands.
Church, you talk and talk and talk, but you do so using a dead language. You’re holding onto dusty words that have no resonance in people’s ears, not realizing that just saying those words louder isn’t the answer. All the religious buzzwords that used to work 20 years ago no longer do.
3.Church........ You cannot see past the bricks and mortar
The coffee bar, the high-tech lights, the funky Children’s work, the hyper worship leader In fact, most of your time, money and energy seems to be about luring people to where you are instead of reaching people where they already are.
4. Church.......Your love doesn't look like love.
Love seems to be a pretty big deal to you, but we’re not getting that when the rubber meets the road. In fact, more and more, your brand of love seems incredibly selective and decidedly narrow; filtering out all the spiritual riff-raff, which sadly includes far too many who look like me.
You say he is the main thing, but he is missing from prayers, lives and worship services. He rarely gets good exposure. In places there is much talk of the Spirit while Jesus is dressed up for Easter, and Advent and Christmas and the rest of the time we talk about him in whispers. When you lose sight of the main thing church...you've lost the plot.
People are losing their religion because we have lost the main things. There is some hope though on the margins I have encountered people who don't want the eye candy from church but want real food from God's word. I have encountered a language that is relevant and at the same time shocking but real where people say what they think and are honest and vulnerable. It's on the fringes of society that I have encountered what it is to give and receive real love the is broad and not narrow, wide and inclusive. I have encountered people who see Jesus who want to know him. They don't want in impersonal relationship with the church or at times the Jesus of the church. But in contrast they want to follow the radical rebel Jesus who is at the heart of the New Testament.
On the shores of Galilee amongst a group of fishermen Jesus stood and called out to them "Follow me" He is still calling the same way. Not a calling to a church, or simply a way of life, but a calling to a relationship with him.
Luke 5: 5- 11 5 One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, the people were crowding around him and listening to the word of God. 2 He saw at the water’s edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. 3 He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat. 4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.” 5 Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.” 6 When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. 7 So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink. 8 When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” 9 For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, 10 and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon’s partners. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.” 11 So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.
John Bell and Graham Maule have captured a flavour of Jesus and a flavour of what church can become in the last verse of their song "Inspired by love and anger"
"Amused in someone’s kitchen,
"Amused in someone’s kitchen,
asleep in someone’s boat,
Attuned to what the ancients exposed,
proclaimed and wrote,
proclaimed and wrote,
A saviour without safety,
a tradesman without tools
Has come to tip the balance
with fishermen and fools"
My God be with us and grant us the grace and patience to never lose our religion if it is about Jesus and at the same time to lose it fast if it is like a boat with holes.
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