Who doesn’t want a love like that? A love that defies the boring old norm and gives the lovers something larger-than-life? I can’t believe that anybody wants to “settle” when it comes to their love and their life. But for all its talk of passion, it strikes me that our culture does standardize love. The norm for modern relationships takes away all the crazy-all the mystery and fire- and turns love into a practical equation for personal pleasure.
When I listen to the words in this song, I’m hearing an impassioned cry against this standardized equation for relationships. I’m hearing words that are getting at something deeper, a truth about love that is too often overlooked. Take a look at some of the lyrics for a minute:
“The world makes all kinds of rules for love
I say you gotta let it do what it does
I don’t want just another hug and a kiss goodnight
Catchin’ up calls and a date sometimes”
The culture we live in does make a lot of rules for love that aren’t consistent with God’s incredible design.
The world’s rules say that love is cheap. They say we can give love and receive love for basically free, at no cost to us or to anyone else, for fun.
The rules say love is short-lived. They say that love will run out… and that’s okay, because there are lots of other people to choose from when that happens.
They say love is flexible. They say we can adapt it to fit whatever mold we want it to, and whatever it looks like in the end, it’s still the same love.
They say love is calm. They play it safe, and say that it is not an explosive, life-changing, reordering of two individual’s separate realities into one.
But oh, real love breaks these rules! It cracks them, because real love is the most costly investment we can make. It crushes them, because real love is forever, and it doesn’t just reach into the future of forever: it seeps into the past, too. It shatters them, because real love is not equal to liking or desire or attraction or anything else: it’s so much more. And it blows the broken rules “far and wide” because real love is a wild thing: a fierce, beautiful wonder you can’t really wrap your mind around. Not ever, I don’t think.
And there’s more, too. These may be the most insightful lyrics of all, despite their shallow shell.
“I don’t want good and I don’t want good enough…
I don’t want easy, I want crazy”
The rules would say that love is easy.
It isn’t. Not at all. Real love is the hardest thing you’ll ever do. It is also the most worthwhile, but because it’s so hard, the rules dictated by the “norm” say we should skip the struggle and just take the “good enough” love. We should settle for cheap, easy love that comes and goes and never even brushes your heart, let alone possesses it.
It’s likely that I am reading a lot more into this song than the artist intended. But I’ve heard it said that words are shaped into songs and stories and poems in order to hold the things people read into them: they’re not meant to be shallow. And for me, this song holds encouragement, because it reminds me that the world’s “rules” for love are wrong. We were created for wild, crazy, wonderful love.
“Tonight, the midnight rules are breaking.
There’s no such thing as wild enough
And maybe we just think too much
Who needs to play it safe in love?
Let’s be crazy”
