I’d Love to Change the World…

Have you ever heard a song that was originally written with a secular message, but if heard by a believer it could also have a spiritual message?  Last night I heard a song on my I-pod that could be both secular and religious.  The song is “I’d Love to Change the World” by the 70’s band Ten Years After and it really spoke to me and my current state of mind in Afghanistan.  I invite you to go to I-tunes and listen to it.  If you know the band and the time period when the band wrote the song, then you would know that Ten Years After was part of the counter-culture movement of the seventies.  The song speaks to that generation’s desire for peace and love in a world filled with violence, division and hate (The world hasn’t changed much).  However, that generation was conflicted as to how to go about changing the world, so they passed the responsibility to someone else.   The chorus goes like this:

I’d love to change the world

But I don’t know what to do

So I’ll leave it up to you

Here’s why this song speaks to me:  A long time ago, I can’t pinpoint the exact date, but I know I was really young, I felt called to do something really big with my life.  When I speak of something big I don’t mean in the heroic sense like Superman, but I did want to move mountains.  I wanted to change the world.  And for the longest time I thought politics was the answer.  If only I could attain enough power and position I could make things better for everyone else. So I jumped into the political arena with both feet only to realize that politicians can’t change the world.  In fact, they usually make it worse.  It took me twenty years to realize that fact!  Now here I am in Afghanistan, the most dangerous country in the world and I still want to change the world – this war-torn poverty-stricken world that is filled with lost souls, broken hearts and forgotten dreams.  However, this experience has taught me that I can’t do it by myself.  It has taken me 42 years and a deployment to Afghanistan to teach me this valuable lesson.  In fact, I now realize how arrogant it is for any man to think that he/she could personally change the world on their own.  And that’s the difference in the Chris Neeley before Afghanistan and the Chris Neeley today.  I realize that I don’t have to change the world alone.  Nor do I have to carry around the awesome weight and responsibility that comes with it.  I’m leaving that up to God.  He knows what to do.  I have to trust Him to show me the way to help Him.  I bet the band Ten Years After never fathomed the song “I’d Love to Change the Word” would one day inspire a Christian man in a war zone to turn to God for a way to do what they considered impossible.  The difference is anything is possible with God.