“Give me the Beach Boys

and free my soul

I wanna get lost in your rock and roll

and drift away.”

These are the lyrics to the 2002 Uncle Kracker song “Drift Away” that I used to belt out the car window, very confidently, I might add.

Except the actual lyrics are

“Give me the beat boys

and free my soul. . .”

But hey, sometimes the Beach Boys can help us drift away, no? And this was no casual slip-up of lyrics. I really believed they were correct. I remember insisting to a friend that “Beach Boys” made more sense because the song is about how music helps us get through tough times and clearly the singer wanted to release a tribute song for the Beach Boys.

It was only after listening to the song more closely, as well as one of the recordings from the 1970s of the original version written by Mentor Williams, that I realized the error of my ways!

Hopefully you’ve never messed up lyrics that stubbornly!

But that opportunity to laugh at myself also illustrates, on a much lighter note, how I tend to let my own perspective and thoughts mask or distort the truth.

The problem: I hear what I want to hear.

My own perception of what I thought was being sung sunk into my brain. From there, I let my imagination and emotional connection build this misheard lyric into what I thought was fact. I consulted only myself, my own thoughts, and my own feelings.

Take that pattern of behavior and apply it to something much more significant such as how we view other people or how we approach an issue on which we disagree, and the results are really damaging.

Look at what I did once -- I’d convinced myself of what I’ll call the non-truth. I led other people astray, or at least attempted to do so. I was an evangelist for my own reasoning based on nothing but my own experience. I’d made no attempt to verify the non-truth, instead it was so reasonable and seemingly right to me because it made sense. It fit with how I heard the song and saw the world. It was all about me.

So what was the only remedy for my non-truth? The actual truth, of course. I had to go back to the original song and let it be the standard. Not my feelings, not my experience, nor my reasoning could stand against the true lyrics of the song.

Pick your divisive topic of the day and see if you may be falling victim to this same bad pattern: politics, DEI mandates, COVID vaccines. What about things even more specific to your community: style of worship music at your church, decisions by your school board, opinions of your neighbors about other neighbors.

Any and all of these topics can be hurtful and harmful if we, as followers of Jesus, are starting with ourselves to discern what is true. Proverbs 3:5 tells us quite clearly to lean not on our own understanding. But perhaps the story of the Bereans will illustrate this in a better way.

Read this account from Acts 17 and note on what each group of Jews relied to determine their response to Paul:

When Paul and his companions had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue. As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah,” he said. Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women.

But other Jews were jealous; so they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace, formed a mob and started a riot in the city. They rushed to Jason’s house in search of Paul and Silas in order to bring them out to the crowd. But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some other believers before the city officials, shouting: “These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here, and Jason has welcomed them into his house. They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.” When they heard this, the crowd and the city officials were thrown into turmoil. Then they made Jason and the others post bond and let them go.

As soon as it was night, the believers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.

Some of the Jews in Thessalonica were jealous. They were relying on their feelings and on their own understanding of the law, and it led to turmoil. Contrast that with the Bereans who went straight to scripture to test what Paul was teaching. When it lined up, so did they as followers of Jesus.

May we not turn to ourselves for answers and understanding, but instead let’s make sure the lens through which we are seeing the world and testing what is true starts with Scripture and God’s truth. Otherwise, we may get lost in wrong lyrics!

ABOUT OUR BLOGGER

Mary Beth Gombita spent a decade in Washington, D.C. before relocating to Pennsylvania in 2018. She married her husband, Stephen in 2015, and they have two young boys. Originally from Georgia, though she’s lost her accent, she is a lover of sweet tea, a proud Georgia Bulldog and an avid music fan. She and Stephen lead a young adults small group and have enjoyed various service opportunities at Willowdale Chapel. Mary Beth runs her own communications consulting business from home focused on messaging and media outreach.

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