"Beyond Reach" Explanation

Being honest will often make you look worse than being dishonest. This is somewhat obvious, because an honest person will be open about their faults and mistakes, while a dishonest person can simply pretend they have no faults and make no mistakes. In a single instant, being the kind of person who pretends they're perfect might seem favorable, but in the long-term you forfeit your chance to truly grow beyond wherever you are right now. And besides that, what an internally-exhausting way to go through life! Constantly obligating yourself to keep up appearances, almost always while you're withering away inside.

This song compares pretense and sincerity. Seeming vs being. It's inspired by my own experiences and attempts at sincere introspection. I feel like a fraud standing in here with you

Do you exist with the same curse that I do?

I grew up surrounded by others who shared my faith. At a certain point, I began identifying aspects of myself that were very much inconsistent with the morality I believed in. I began to recognize an inclination in me towards some things I knew were wrong. Most attempts to address these things with my Christian friends at the time were met with awkwardness and what seemed like feigned ignorance. To this day I'm not sure if it was because I was just an exceptionally bad kid or I was just the only one of us willing to acknowledge these parts of himself. Either way, at the time it was definitely not a good feeling.

My heart grew still, the silence was broken

I saw the smile escape your lips

They never opened

When I was a young man I was sitting with the youth group in the church I had attended all my life. The topic of the night had been accountability and confessing our sins and struggles to one another (which is absolutely Biblical and extremely important). There was a point where the youth leader encouraged anyone who was willing to divulge any sin or temptation they really struggled with, in obedience with the Bible's call for accountability. Some people listened to rap with swearing sometimes. Some people lied sometimes. Maybe some ate too much. In my estimation, everyone was just sharing the least unsavory "bad" things they could come up with that would still count as confessions. I debated with myself for minutes as to whether or not I should really be honest about my own sin and temptation. I didn't want everyone to think I was a terrible person, but I truly believed in the importance of being real with each other, and part of me also thought maybe my honesty would inspire others to be more genuine and vulnerable themselves. Well, I raised my hand. I was honest about my own struggles with lust and pornography. The entire atmosphere in the room changed. This was obviously not what my youth leader was looking for. She almost instantly made an obvious effort to distance herself from the subject and as kindly as possible reassure us all that she definitely didn't struggle with anything like that. In a few moments the hope and relief I felt at coming clean was replaced by such disappointment and a heavy sense of judgment and unwelcomeness.

Have I descended

To depths beyond your reach?

Am I the lowest of the low?

Or do you see yourself in me?

When someone is open about their failures, do we tend to look at them as lesser? Do we use their honesty as an opportunity to reinforce the false image of ourselves we show the world, hoping we'll look even better by comparison? Or do we look at them with grace and remember our own faults; the fact that we all fall miserably short of God's righteousness?

Let me suffer the loss

Broken before your eyes

Annihilate the pretense, this cancerous disguise

Wash it away, give me to what I fear

The shame of my contrition before conviction insincere

It's better to look like a bad person or an idiot for being honest than it is to be a fake. So many terrible cycles are upheld almost entirely by our unwillingness to own up to the reality of our own hearts and desires and be vulnerable with one another. So many people feel like they have no option but to pretend to be something they're not; like they're the only ones dealing with whatever it is they deal with in secret. It's very unfortunate, and especially so in the context of the church. It's simultaneously baffling and painfully understandable how we can take the message of the Gospel and somehow distort it into such pretentious and self-righteous emptiness.

"You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary." ― Jonathan Edwards