About a year and a half ago, I was looking at the website of a band whose music I enjoy, Iszoloscope. I noted some of their influences, wrote them down, and listened to a few songs by each of them. Depeche Mode stood out as a brillant band with substantive, meaningful lyrics. DM’s music has certainly gone through many transitions (e.g., the difference is quite significant betweenSpeak & Spell [1981] and Playing the Angel [2005]). However, the first album I listened to and purchased, Violator, is a decent sample of their work. It’s not as dark as their Black Celebration, but it retains the same depth of emotion and strength of articulation that it had. Also, this album is one of their most purchased in the US, and if you’ve heard any of their songs, you’ve likely heard one from here. Indeed, if you’re a big fan of Johnny Cash or Marilyn Manson, then you’ve heard the lyrics to “Personal Jesus.” They’ve both done covers of the song. It was the first song I heard by them and it is certainly one of their best all-around tracks. The music is phenomenal, and the lyrics are rhythmic, moving, and subtle. The song expresses something that is common to human experience in a fresh and profound sense: The nature of faith–without God.
However, before developing the ideas of this song specifically, it is necessary to briefly outline some of the major themes in DM’s work. Depeche Mode’s “philosophy,” if one may talk about bands expositing a philosophy, is essentially a post-theistic modernist humanism. Depeche Mode never speaks like the “New Atheists” (read: “bad Voltaire knock-offs”), pretentiously scoffing at God’s lack of existence (“John the Revelator,” Playing the Angel, gets close, though). Rather, the world in which DM operates is a world where there is simply no recourse to God. Human relationships are, therefore, of primary importance. Human symbology and social practices have meaning and teleology even though they may have no essential meaning (“Blue Dress,” Violator is the best example, but “World Full of Nothing,” Black Celebration develops the same idea). DM even deals with the human experience of what Christians would call sin (“Halo,” Violator, “When the Body Speaks,” Exciter, “The Sinner in Me,” Playing the Angel). There is no escape from banality, ugliness, and imperfection. Though DM regularly asserts that human relationships are the partial answer to the desperate nature of existence, even other people are often simply a drug which briefly allow us escape from the importance issues in life (“Sweetest Perfection”, Violator). As all good atheists do, they powerfully articulate the despair that the definitively insoluble problem of evil brings upon us (“Precious,” Playing the Angel). Modernism, here I mean the presumption that reason is the provider of the criteria by which we adjudicate between potential explanations of reality, as such is not explicitly developed in their work, as far as I know, but it is a necessary presumption of the concepts in many of their songs. The song “Stripped,” from Exciter, deals with this to some extent with regard to developing one’s individuality and interacting with other individuals. In sum, in a godless world, where reason makes us cynical, forcing the recognition of the horror of existence and death upon us, each individual must struggle forward, attempting to find fulfillment in the only life there is (“Damaged People,” Playing the Angel).
Finally, then, “Personal Jesus” should be placed within this developing philosophy of Depeche Mode. It opens with the bold phrase: Reach out and touch faith. This line really expresses the central message of the song. The last word, faith, seems an odd word for DM to use, given their philosophy. The speaker of the lyric claims to be the “personal Jesus” for the respondent. He is “second best” to Christ, but the respondent has to take what he can get. The speaker is there, “someone who cares…someone to hear your prayers.” He is near–all that you must do is pick up the phone, and he’ll be there for you.
First, Depeche Mode is implying a prescriptive statement here: Faith should be something grounded tangibly. The reason you should “take second best” is because Christ isn’t there, he doesn’t care, and he doesn’t respond to your prayers. DM is not trying to convert anyone to atheism. They do not offer any arguments for God’s non-existence. DM is reaching out to the individual who feels unknown and alone; that is, the one who already agrees with them that Christ is silent in their helpless position. Whereas Christ asks for a leap of faith, the personal Jesus is “flesh and bone”—an empirical ground for your faith is present whenever you need it. The term “personal Jesus” implies something itself: each person needs a being who cares about them in their individuality.
Second, therefore, faith is fundamentally relational. As an example from Christian theology, consider the difference between Melanchthon’s definition of faith as assensus and Luther’s as fiducia. The former defines faith as an intellectual affirmation of the truths of Christianity, whereas the latter is something similar to a relational dependence upon and trust in Christ. Depeche mode accepts something along the lines of fiducia, although the ultimacy of the dependence-relation is necessarily mitigated somewhat. Personal contact is what leads to faith and belief in the person who takes the place of Jesus.
Lastly, this faith is capable of three things according to the song: self-definition, forgiveness, and the reception of supplication. The Christian God is silent when an individual is trudging through some of the worst parts of life. Whether we are suffering because of pain, another’s pain, or because of the recognition of our own sin, Christ’s love is often conspicuously absent. Other people, however, and those closest to us, will often still be there in those times. One’s self is inextricably bound to such relationships, and it is through the comfort of other caring individuals that we find our questions interacted with and our sinful selves lovingly accepted.
Depeche Mode gets things wrong about faith, but aside from that they don’t hold to an ontology that makes faith meaningful in its essence, not much. That’s a huge “aside from,” but considering they don’t hold to such, it’s more surprising how much they get right. The describe faith as it is often considered it the Christian religion, but they change the object of that faith. They put their faith in a different entity, yet they still strongly recognize the human need for acceptance, forgiveness and deliverance.
As a side note, it may seem that there are additional problems here. This song ignores the difficulties of putting one’s faith in another, both from the perspective of the person putting faith in the other, and the other failing to live up to the standards of good faith. However, that isn’t the purpose of this song, and they do deal with those issues in other places. DM is acutely aware of the fallibility of human existence. See “I Want It All,” Playing the Angel, for the former problem, and “It Doesn’t Matter Two”, Black Celebration for the latter. These problems are there considered, but whether they are able to adequately solve them is entirely a different question.
In the end, of course, Depeche Mode is just a band, and they don’t claim to present an utterly consistent system of philosophy. As the hymnists for an existentialistic humanism, however, they are exceptionally well-suited. “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” wasn’t a theology, but it moved people emotionally through the song to Lutheran principles in the lyrics. Similarly, “Personal Jesus” is a powerful expression of the humanist’s plight without Christ.
[Note: I originally wrote this in a different context, so forgive some of the preparatory material included that makes it so long. I intend eventually to write a series of posts on Depeche Mode, because I think their work warrants at least some critical investigation. If it ever materializes, the first post will recap a lot of what is in that prolegomena so that other posts about the band (hopefully one per album) can simply refer back to it.]
A Humanities Symposium 