If I Ruled the World...

As an aside to the actual core content of this post, and for those that didn't know, I like Jazz music. Norah Jones is one of my favorite artists, and it's not uncommon for me to be lounging around or biding my time with Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane, or Miles Davis in the background, subtly entertaining the fringes of my consciousness. Typically I just listen with the music low while I focus on the task at hand, almost as if a soundtrack to my life (it's playing as I write this blog even now). The melodies play for my subconscious and rarely do I tune in with enough concentration to pay attention to the lyrics.

But occasionally, the lyrics catch in my ears and resonate loud enough in my mind to break my attention and warrant further listening. This happened to me recently as I was listening to Jamie Cullum's new album, The Pursuit. First and foremost, I'd point out that this album is fantastic, and probably my favorite of his yet (and YES that is an exploding piano). Jamie's music is hard to really classify as jazz, per se, because it is uniquely different but at the same time familiar to what one might expect to find in a smoky piano bar. The Pursuit branches out from his other albums to explore new sounds you might NOT expect from him (one of my favorite songs on the album is actually a remake of Rihanna's "Please Don't Stop the Music.")

One song on this album in particular took my brain and tore it away from what had preoccupied it previously (on this day, it was yard work). The song was "If I Ruled the World," and before I fault Jamie too much, he didn't write it, he just redid it... I linked to the song for a listen on last.fm and also provided the lyrics so you can know what I'm talking about. The song itself is beautiful, as is Cullum's piano-playing, but it's the words that I couldn't ignore.

The verses and chorus all follow a simple theme along the lines of how much better the world would be, were it run the way the singer thinks it should be run... "If I ruled the world, every man would see the world was his friend. Yeah, there'd be happiness that no man could end... No my friend, not if I ruled the world."

I see in this something I think we all relate to: A cry for justice, a desire for good to prosper and evil to be vanquished, for joy and happiness, and above all, a question: "Why isn't it different?" Those are things I'm sure most people have thought, but the next step is a dangerous one.

"I could do it better."

Man thinks he knows what is best for man. But what about the really tough decisions? The life or death situations, the gray areas, the "lesser of two evils" scenarios where no choice is truly ideal, but one has to be be made? The truth is, our worldviews, our emotions, and our actions don't take place in a vacuum. One man's behavior can be in his best interest, but at the same time impact another man in a negative way. Worst yet, there are men who take pleasure in the pain of others. One man's "happiness has no end" when at the great expense of other men. But I don't think this song is one man accusingly shouting to the universe, or more pointedly to GOD, saying "I could do it better," but instead, mankind.

Theodicy... This problem of evil, is essentially a challenge to God to explain Himself. "Why do you let this continue? If you really have the power to stop it, why don't you?" It is a question that has been around longer than this song. And while it is an understandable emotion to feel and question to pose, the answer isn't so simple or clean. If God eradicated evil, the reality is that I'd be gone with it; no matter how "good" I may be, it pales in comparison to His perfect goodness. If I ruled the world, I wouldn't purposely cause pain to others, and I would want people to be happy, but I could no sooner achieve this perfect world than anyone else.

I imagine Jamie Cullum, and Tony Bennett before him, had good intentions with this song. I believe the majority of mankind is generally more "good" than "bad," while still being inherently sinful, if that makes any sense. Don't mistake what I'm saying here: We're ALL born sinners, and our selfishness and primacy of this concept of SELF is loathsome, indeed, but generally our conscience and the idea of "civilized society" keeps most people at bay, if you will. Nobody is perfect, but the number of sociopaths and murderers is less than those who would wish well on others. But even then, we can't take credit for that, God wrote his Laws on our hearts and gave us an innate understanding of the concept of right and wrong. He made us that way.

And as soon as we (mankind, that is) start claiming that this philanthropic desire is our own, or that we've got things figured out to the point that we'd all be better off if we decided our own fates... Well, that's some dangerous ground to be treading upon. I salute Jamie Cullum's desires for the world to be a better place, but it isn't going to happen by anything WE can do. But it IS going to happen...