Because We Don't Need Another Hero

I loved the Mad Max film series. My favorite was the second film in the franchise, The Road Warrior. But by the time Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome came around, the story was pretty stale to me.

But for some reason, the song sung by Tina Turner from that last film is stuck in my head. I think I need to share it with you. Maybe it's because Thomas Merton died today, back in 1968. Maybe he is pointing out the truth of our fallen world to me, and suggesting this song.

I believe from watching the video and following along with the lyrics, this pop culture hit is a kind of modern day lamentation for Advent (or for Lent). My buddy Father Louis was on to something, I know that for a fact.

Or maybe it's just me. But the scenes that unfold below look a lot like what Father Louis was writing about with these thoughts in The Seven Storey Mountain,

Free by nature, I was nevertheless the prisoner of my own violence and my own selfishness, in the image of the world into which I was born... loving God and yet hating him, living instead in fear and hopeless self-contradictory hungers.

Have a look and listen,

We Don't Need Another Hero
Songwriters:Terry Britten & Graham Hamilton Lyle



Out of the ruins
Out from the wreckage
Can't make the same mistake this time
We are the children
The last generation
We are the ones they left behind
And I wonder when we are ever gonna change it
Living under the fear 'till nothing else remains

(chorus)
We don't need another hero
We don't need to know the way home
All we want is life beyond,
the Thunderdome.

Looking for something we can rely on
There's got to be something better out there:
Love and compassion
Their day is coming
All else are castles built in the air
And I wonder when we are ever gonna change it
Living under the fear 'till nothing else remains

All the children say:
We don't need another hero
We don't need to know the way home
All we want is life beyond,
the Thunderdome.

So, what do we do with our lives?
We leave only a mark!
Will our story shine like a light?
Or end in the dark?
Give it all or nothing
We don't need another hero...

For unto us, a savior is born.

Thus says the LORD, your redeemer,
the Holy One of Israel:
I, the LORD, your God,
teach you what is for your good,
and lead you on the way you should go.
If you would hearken to my commandments,
your prosperity would be like a river,
and your vindication like the waves of the sea;
Your descendants would be like the sand,
and those born of your stock like its grains,
Their name never cut off
or blotted out from my presence. (Isaiah 48: 17-19)


Thanks be to God.

Update: Deacon Greg's Quote of the Day from Father Louis.