“God Gave Me You" by Dave Barnes, Friday, September 9, 2022 (Partial Repost)

 

Dave Barnes is a Contemporary Christian singer-songwriter, but he isn't completely bound by the genre. Barnes is a Nashville songwriter whose songs have been recorded by country, pop, and CCM singers. In fact, his 2010 hit, "God Gave Me You," became a number-one hit for country singer and future The Voice judge, Blake Shelton. Barnes's version has a lot less twang but all the production quality of a pop-country hit. Barnes wrote the song for his wife who had been through the "ups and downs" of his musical career. Shelton heard the song on a CCM radio station and decided to propose to his then-girlfriend, fellow country star, Miranda Lambert. 

WE ARE STITCHED TOGETHER.  The strap-line of the song is told in the title: "God Gave Me You." The speaker was broken until he met the right person. That person came from God, and together God and the man's soulmate mend the speaker's heart. Many of us listen to a song like this and think about our own relationships. We might think about the ways we've failed those we've loved in the past, or how they have failed us. Christians might look at songs like this as a formula: be the right person, God will send the right person; God will give you 50+ years of a satisfying marriage with 2.5 kids, satiating sex, and ultimate fulfillment that you've fruitfully multiplied. And sometimes that works out. To this day, Barnes remains happily married with three kids. Like Shelton, listeners can be enchanted by the handsome dirty blond Barnes holding his guitar, singing about "an angel lovely" being tricked into falling for someone who is out of his league. If only you let God work his matchmaking magic, this fairytale could happen to you. By contrast, Blake Shelton, who covered the song, dedicating it to his new bride, Miranda Lambert, is no longer married to Lambert. As Shelton's video for "God Gave Me You" (see below) features Lambert, it is no longer played on Country Music Television (CMT). Sometimes love doesn't work out, and we wonder what went wrong. 

I'VE BEEN A WALKING HEARTACHE. I'VE MADE A MESS OF ME. In 2014 I used this song in my religion class for my adult ESL students. Somehow we were talking about love and relationships, a topic I really had no business talking about being single and slowly coming to terms with my sexuality. My students felt that "God Gave Me You" was a nice fairytale of a song. The supporting Bible verses, such as Genesis 2:23-24, which says: 'The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man. That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh" (NIV) didn't make the students buy into the "divine conspiracy." And I was buying into less and less. The formula for a good marriage puts so much pressure on both parties and makes the relationship with God transactional. If I do x, God will bless me with y.  If I am faithful until marriage, God will bless me with a "smokin' hot wife." And there's tons of rhetoric regarding the opposite: If you do x, God will allow y to happen to you. If you look at porn, you'll become a sex addict, a rapist, or maybe even gay. If you have sex before marriage, your marriage will likely end in divorce. The problem was, in 2014 when the divine conspiracy was thwarted, I started to hear stories about marriages breaking up when young adults married because their hormones told them to marry but in their 30s and 40s they realized they didn't love their partners and they wanted more from their lives. And the biggest thing that shattered this myth for me, was realizing that no matter how I tried to deny my truth, I only saw a life of misery. So that led me to a bit of rebellion.

Dave Barnes music video:

Blake Shelton: 

Read the lyrics on Genius.