I bought Coldplay’s sixth studio album, Ghost Stories, shortly after its release in 2014. Only 16 at the time, I remember my expectations being upended by a cold, mournfully beautiful opening track that landed me in a realm akin to what C. S. Lewis calls “northernness”—a bittersweet longing for something beyond ordinary life. Ostensibly a breakup album, Ghost Stories evokes such an overflow of disappointed longing and desire that I wondered if these sad love songs weren’t reaching out, unknowingly, toward a heavenly Source.
Since 2014, Coldplay released the optimistic pop album A Head Full of Dreams, the eclectic Everyday Life, and most recently, Music of the Spheres, released last October. Throughout their discography, Coldplay’s music intermittently evokes the “northernness” I felt listening to Ghost Stories. It’s earthly pop music with an eye toward the heavens. Because of this, I had high expectations for the potential spiritual ponderings of Music of the Spheres.
Seeking ‘Higher’ Power in Lower Loves
When I first listened to the album, I’d just read Dante’s The Divine Comedy. My thoughts turned toward the glorious spheres of Paradise where Dante realizes his affection for Beatrice, his earthly beloved, is simply a subsidiary of divine love intended to bring him into communion with the Trinity. I was hoping for an album with a similar posture—seeing in the things of earth signs of transcendence beyond; an album with grand explorations of the big questions of life—time, death, love, and God. Yet Coldplay’s first single for the album, “Higher Power” (a title brimming with potential spiritual meaning!), quickly revealed the disappointing scope of the project.
The song’s “higher power” is simply a romantic partner, who elevates the singer from his despondency and invites him into a celebration of life. It’s a catchy, enjoyable song. But it confirmed my fears about the album. What might have been a meditation on an actual “higher power” ends up just being about a girl. Put in more Christian terms, what might have been an emotionally honest album about agape ends up being yet another one about eros. In the Christian tradition, agape is the highest form of love because it characterizes Christ’s self-sacrificial act on the cross on behalf of humanity, and is at the heart of who God is—a Trinity of persons who are always giving. Eros is a human form of love that, if not redeemed by agape, becomes a terrible, taking god.
What might have been a meditation on an actual ‘higher power’ ends up just being about a girl.
I’m not against love songs, but this grandiose view of erotic love—as somehow divine, salvific, and all-encompassing—promises more than it can deliver. It’s seeking cosmic fulfillment in terrestrial romance. It’s like asking a pond to hold the sea. It’s asking the human to satisfy in a way only God can.
Misplaced Transcendence
Coldplay is not alone in the quest to view romantic love as a means to spiritual fulfillment and self-realization. Through pop culture of every sort, we constantly hear the message that the “one” romantic partner has the potential to fulfill our every emotional need—to “complete us” and quench the desires of our soul—at least for the moment. Whether in Bachelor-style dating shows or Netflix rom-coms, romantic love (eros) is exalted to a place of spiritual transcendence in our secular age. We also hear that feelings and emotions should be the preeminent indicators of having found that fabled “soul mate.” But suppose feeling isn’t enough? Or worse—suppose we fall in love with feelings instead of with the actual person?
When erotic love is stationed above all other moral values, it tyrannizes the lives of those in its grip.
C. S. Lewis writes about this in The Four Loves. He affirms eros as a good aspect of God’s design, in the context of a marriage between a man and a woman. He doesn’t condemn sexuality or the body, as some mistaken Christians have. And interestingly, he doesn’t warn of the dangers of idolizing a romantic partner, but rather the idolatry of romance itself: “The real danger seems to me not that the lovers will idolize each other but that they will idolize Eros himself” (emphasis mine). When erotic love is stationed above all other moral values, it tyrannizes the lives of those in its grip. Much of the music in Spheres, like so much in pop culture, idolizes the intoxicating feeling of being in love more than celebrating selfless, committed devotion to the object of our love. It’s not the person that counts, but how that person makes me feel.
Greater Love
This is why, according to Lewis, eros needs to be ruled: “The god dies or becomes a demon unless he obeys God.” The answer is not to close oneself off from eros or other attachments, but to realize that real love generates from God, is ruled by God, and can only truly be what it’s supposed to be under God’s rule. God designed sex and romantic desire, after all. Eros points back to him by its very nature, and it’s most satisfying to us when it spurs us to find our greater satisfaction in him. Yet when art celebrates eros as an end in itself, worshipping the creation rather than the Creator (Rom. 1:25), it becomes idolatrous and sadly misses the mark of true transcendence.
Coldplay’s album—like so much in our sex-saturated but spiritually impoverished modern world—misses the Object that would allow romantic love to be what it’s meant to be: a gift, and a pointer to the ultimate Lover of our souls.
Involved in Women’s Ministry? Add This to Your Discipleship Tool Kit.
We need one another. Yet we don’t always know how to develop deep relationships to help us grow in the Christian life. Younger believers benefit from the guidance and wisdom of more mature saints as their faith deepens. But too often, potential mentors lack clarity and training on how to engage in discipling those they can influence.
Whether you’re longing to find a spiritual mentor or hoping to serve as a guide for someone else, we have a FREE resource to encourage and equip you. In Growing Together: Taking Mentoring Beyond Small Talk and Prayer Requests, Melissa Kruger, TGC’s vice president of discipleship programming, offers encouraging lessons to guide conversations that promote spiritual growth in both the mentee and mentor.
