Woven Hand

“What I try to do with my music is to say that it’s never enough, and it never will be enough,” he says in a moment of candor. “It doesn’t matter what you do—how good you are. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done—how bad you are. Salvation is of the Lord, and we think it is of us, if we behave a certain way or eat the right food—basically that God is not sovereign. If there is a God, which I think that a lot of people are ready and willing to admit whether they are Christian or not, it really doesn’t matter. It’s of no consequence if there is a God, because it’s all up to them anyway. Whatever means they choose, meditating or going to the psychologist, they use whatever faith they have as another tool, just like if they were taking a medicine. Basically, my job is to tell people that they are hopeless. Hopeless without Christ.”

Those are obviously polarizing words, the sort that rarely turn up in contemporary art without immediately branding their author as a non-inclusive radical nominated for margins of the reasonable world. “I was touring with Daniel Smith [of Danielson Famile/Br. Danielson fame] and Sufjan Stevens and after we would play he’d say, ‘I just can’t believe what you get away with,’” Edwards laughs. “And sometimes I agree. I can’t believe I get away with it either. I know it’s up to the Lord, but it could very well change.” Seeing that Edwards does push so boldly into conceptual territory that is unfashionable in the circles he travels, the question arises as to whether his audience actually grasps what he’s saying.

“I think they do, but I think a lot of people just look at it as if they were looking at a painting. They can appreciate it but they don’t necessarily agree. They find it interesting—like going to the circus. It’s cute, until it’s an affront to you personally. I mean, I’m surprised that anybody …,” he says, cutting himself off mid-thought. “Well, I’m not surprised, because I know that the Lord is in control of everything,” he continues, centering himself again on his worldview. “Because I know that the reason I’m selling the records that I do and touring the way I am is because of Him. Why else would people come and listen if people weren’t directing them to do so?”

Still, as his message is an uncomfortable fit for those who don’t share his faith, and his music is anathema to the comparably sterile contemporary Christian music establishment, he now assumes an unusual place in the modern musical pantheon. Rubbing elbows with artists who don’t share his view but have come to similar conclusions on the ethical deficits that define man’s condition, Edwards holds tightly to his idea of the uncomfortable truth. “They can see it. All men can see it,” Edwards says of the ugliness that colors man’s character and leaves him in need of redemption. “Whether they want to spend any time looking at it or not is another story. And I’ve always been drawn to those kinds of people, whether they were Christians or not, like Joy Division, Nick Cave, Tom Waits. There’s not a lot of hope there, but there is truth.”

Often, that truth goes no farther than a shared admission that humans inflict a profound amount of misery on each other. Still, Edward’s unflinching faith in the existence of meaning beyond earthly suffering places the truth he’s advocating in a tradition of deeply human contrarians like Cash, men who stood against the prevailing winds of their time, clinging to a hope tested in the crucible of faith, not because they wanted to but because they found they had no choice.

“I feel the responsibility to speak truth, and speak it in love, even though sometimes it’s scary,” he laughs before turning deadly serious. “To evil, truth is harsh. To self, to be selfless is harsh. It’s unnatural and it’s distasteful. Otherwise, it would be easy. But it’s not.”