Hallelujah

This is a great tune. Haunting melody. The lyrics are another thing, though. Hallelujah means "praise the Lord." But the song speaks of a "cold and broken hallelujah."

The rest of the words talk about shattered relationships and the seeming futility of it all and I detect something like an attitude of postmodern despair. It goes like this: since we can't ultimately know the truth, any praise, any worship, any joy, any feelings for another person we might express would only be fleeting and hollow things based strictly on emotion.

A joyless kind of joy, I suppose. There's a lot of it around.

How sad.

Is there any hope?

What about faith? Here's a question: do I have to know something empirically (you know, experience it with my senses) to believe in it? Isn't faith the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen?

Hallelujah indeed.

I've heard that a fool says in his heart, "There is no God."

I pity the fool.