As I was showing someone something about Gord Downie on the computer, she tapped on a video that made all that I had learned about the man and his music, merely a prelude to what I saw on the screen—merely a lead-up to his career’s all-time low. The sight and the sound stupefied both of us. After watching the clip a few more times, I began to understand. Because of my entrenchment in the world before my conversion—because once I too was a member of the hedonistic herd—I can interpret, at least marginally, things through the prism of the way I used to be, live, and think. But because now I am a Bible-informed Christian, I can take this interpretation, and then juxtapose it with an interpretation from the new life that supersedes my old ways. Then, by eying the secular and the sacred at the same time, I can more satisfactorily explain what lies before me. Here is a description of the display that jarred us as we stared at the computer. It was a video clip of the last few minutes of Downie’s last concert. So at the end of this final concert, Gord Downie started to shriek into his microphone for some minutes, before flailing his arms in the air like a mortally wounded magpie. It seems obvious that each one of his shrieks was a shout at the enemy that was taking him away from his fans and his music, and his fans away from him. The shrieks were protests against the alleged injustice of cancer—against cancer being so arrogant as to embed itself into a brain to destroy a beloved artist. The shrieks were a witness to his fans that he was being unjustly cut down and taken away. I suppose that most fans construed the shrieks in this manner. The flailing is harder to interpret, but I think it included a desperate spontaneous show of having no answer for the coming fate, and no certain hope to overleap this fate. He could not see how death could be swallowed up in victory, as it says in 1 Corinthians 15.54 for the good of Christians who have faith in Jesus Christ. He was feeling the sting of death. “The sting of death is sin” (1 Corinthians 15.56.) The flailing was an astonied thrashing about—the action of a discomfited man who knows not what to do in the face of imminent, inevitable demise. It is a pitiful sight; I am not making fun of it, only teaching a little Bible through its use. Most of us are familiar with the saying: ‘he saw the writing on the wall,’ which idiom means that a person sees an end coming, like the end of his career or life. In Babylon, the lords of the king were ‘astonied’ (astonished) at the writing on the wall, for they did not know the writing’s interpretation (Daniel 5.9.) Downie did not know the interpretation of his fate any more than these lords knew the interpretation of the words they stared at. He knew that his end was near; but he knew not what this end could mean. The words that prophesied an end to their kingdom were foreign to the Babylonian lords; the meaning of death was foreign to Gord Downie. These, in part, are the words that were written on that wall: “God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it” (Daniel 5.26.) That is the word of God. All kingdoms of this world, whether large or small, must end. The little kingdoms that we build on earth must come to their close. We must prepare ourselves for what is coming. We should not be shocked if we see our end approaching. The meaning of death is that God has something to do with it. Cancer is God’s creature; it does God’s work. This is true even if cancer takes me down. But wasn’t it brave that Gord Downie rallied against terminal cancer to do a final tour for his fans? Did this not remind us of when NDP’s Jack Layton campaigned for his party to the brink of death? There is something romantic in last ditch efforts that are done to please others. It would be unfair to say that such efforts are nothing but conceited. But it is both foolish and tragic to do something so vain and unnecessary at the door of death when the meaning of death is not yet discovered and dealt with.
Some of the comments below the video of him crying out during his concert did, as I did, take the shrieks as plaintive cries against cancer, which conclusion easily follows from the fact that it was cancer that he was dying of. Said one commenter, “One of the rawest moments you’ll ever see…It’s a man with terminal brain cancer performing one of his fans’ favorite songs the way he always has, only with the unbearable anguish of knowing he won’t be getting to do it anymore, saying goodbye to the fans he loves, to the life he loves and knowing he’s going to die soon.” So far I agree. Said another, “He’s screaming at god and the universe, just for once, and he’s right. It just ain’t fair.” I agree in part. And said a third, “Death this way is cruel.” I entirely dissent. The truth is, cancer is a factor used by God to take life. It is neither cruel nor unfair. Getting cancer is entirely fair and completely just, because death is a curse for sin, and Gord Downie was a sinner just like everyone else. Downie’s death was not cruel and unfair, because God, who is perfectly holy and good, has justly cursed mankind for sin. It was no sin for God to take this man’s life by cancer. It is neither cruel nor unfair when God takes life by any agency whatsoever. Even the everlasting remedy that God provides for sinners does not spare a sinner from dying. That everlasting remedy is the person, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and intercession of Jesus Christ. Salvation by faith in Jesus Christ is the only means to lasting consolation for all the ways that we, on account of sin, die. It is Jesus’ death for sin that saves sinners from what inexorably follows death: the inexhaustible wrath of God, which to impenitent sinners amounts to an eternity of anguish. Cancer kills; but unbelief leads to something far worse. Therefore our bouts of cancer should be used as opportune times to get from sin and unbelief to holiness and faith, for without holiness and faith, heaven is inaccessible.
On some level—to merely sober-minded folks: persons who can neither see ‘art’ as enthusiasts do, nor psychoanalyze in deep troughs of Scripture—these antics on the stage have the appearance of madness. It is a sane way to interpret the scene. Considering his career and his last concert together, the Bible has this to say: “The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness: and the end of his talk is mischievous madness” (Ecclesiastes 10.13.) Is that not an accurate summary as far as it goes? This madness might not be clinical madness; but it is a kind of madness—a new kind of madness—a sophisticated, cultural, avant-garde kind of madness. Indeed, this madness is in vogue, fashionable, trendy: tragically hip. See that verse one more time: “The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness: and the end of his talk is mischievous madness” (Ecclesiastes 10.13.) This is not a good trend to get in the groove of. Gord Downie sang foolish songs for a living; and in the end he turned to wailing like a madman. This deduction is based on plain, visual, aural, decisive, definitive evidence. The lyrics and the shrieks, they speak for themselves. After I placed my own comment under the video clip among the others, one man called me a Neanderthal because my comment did not follow in the stream of praise. After correcting the man on the spelling of ‘Neanderthal,’ I informed him that Neanderthals never existed, except maybe in the grunting of Gord Downie. That is a hot come-back; but fighting is fierce on YouTube; and I would rather fell than fail, especially on social media where no one gets hurt. I recognize that for persons who attended the concert or who watched it while teetering on the edge of their seats from afar, the shrieks meant something else than madness. But is it not a kind of madness to be facing something worse on the other side of cancer than cancer itself, and to nonetheless spend your last days singing senseless songs instead of preparing your soul to meet the Judge of all the Earth who, in one of those songs, you have casually addressed as ‘hey, man’? Is it not a kind of madness to end your career shrieking, because you don’t realize, even after twenty centuries of theology since the advent of Christ, that man is a sinner who deserves cancer, death, and everlasting distress; and who, therefore, needs be reconciled to God, and on God’s own terms? Under that video clip of him shrieking, one person promised Gord that they would be together again, by which he meant, evidently, in a good place together. Another one thanked the singer for cleansing his soul! A man who has used God’s name in vain has cleansed the soul of no one, though. He needs cleansing himself. Reunions in the good place happen only between persons who have been cleansed by the blood of Christ—orthodoxy and the clean, practical life of faith being the indications or evidences of their mutual happy destiny. The death of someone we admire causes grief. This grief is made even worse when a person criticizes that someone. But the noblest goal of criticism is to wake sinners up to their need. The desire to have no feelings hurt comes second to a need to be told about the greater hurt of hellfire. One reason the evangelism of our day has no authority, no power, no authenticity, is because too many pastors and writers who call themselves Christians are not willing to apply certain verses of Scripture. A verse like Proverbs 18.7, for example, is obsolete to most persons who profess to be Christians: “A fool’s mouth is his destruction, and his lips are the snare of his soul.” Gord Downie’s trade, plied for decades by the use of his mouth and lips, was a snare to his soul from beginning to end. We should not assume that the end that he came to was an agreeable one. His portion in eternity has been settled and sealed, and we must assume the worst. There is no use pretending otherwise except to self-deceive. Purgatory does not exist; hell does; read your Bibles and see. God’s Proverbs were written for a reason. Those Proverbs have teeth. They will have their chew. Once acquaint yourself with Scripture, and it is easy to imagine Canada’s darling, wretched performer wailing ‘let me out, let me out’ from the abode of the damned, though with an eternity’s worth more intensity than we hear at the close of Locked in the Trunk of a Car.
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