Long-time Twenty One Pilots fans got a huge payoff with their newest album, Breach, which came out this past month. The City Walls music video was especially exciting because it completed(?) the story of the character “Clancy” from their previous album. I explain the background of the lore in a previous post, but in a nutshell — there is a city called Dema with a controlling demon-type character, Nico. Clancy, our hero and the one we are rooting for, escapes from Dema, makes some friends, and now they are besieging the city to take down Nico.
Sounds like an exciting movie with a predictable glory-story ending, right? I know I am not the only fan who had hopes that Clancy would finally defeat his demons … that he would take down Nico and be freed from his oppression for good. I wanted a happy ending.
But shockingly, that is not what happens.
In the above music video, Clancy battles with Nico, and each time Clancy is thrown to the ground, it flashes back to other music videos from the past, and … Nico is there … turns out he was never not there. At the end of the battle, Nico kills Clancy, Clancy comes back to life, destroys Nico once and for all (yay, he’s going to be free!) … and then picks up Nico’s robe and becomes exactly like him.
Wait a minute, that’s not what was supposed to happen. The hero’s not supposed to become the villain! It’s as if Luke Skywalker picked up the dying Darth Vader’s helmet and then put it on. My heart sank.
When Breach came out, I went for a walk by myself and listened to the whole album, start to finish. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole album and was listening intently to every lyric. I wanted to know, was singer Tyler Joseph finally free? Could God ever release him from the torment that is in his own mind? As per the usual Twenty One Pilots style, the messages are dark but peppered with a light humor here and there and ultimately lined with hope. Many of the songs are loud and energetic, but then I came to the bridge of the song “Garbage” — a song about feeling like garbage and having nothing left — and suddenly my eyes filled with tears. These tears were for Tyler Joseph, for myself, and for everyone who can’t seem to escape the things that bind them. The bridge breaks down to simple piano chords, and his voice is quiet, almost a whisper, saying:
Would you move closer if I grew quieter?
Maybe this is you
Maybe you don’t fix and you like it like this
Wait, what? God likes us broken? This caused me to think … and honestly to surrender. Maybe the things I’ve been feeling resentful and insecure about are actually part of God’s plan?
God doesn’t always fix the things we wish he would fix in our lives. Maybe they take us further away from him or make us want to run away. Other times they might drive us to cling to him, our only help. We can’t really answer the “why” of this and even more so the “why” of him liking it like this.
The apostle Paul knew firsthand about God not fixing things. He confides in his letter to the Corinthians about a “thorn” that God intentionally does not remove.
Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. (2 Cor 12:8–9)
Paul’s message about God’s power being made perfect in our weakness is not always something we want to hear. We prefer the happy endings, the healings, the miraculous. Those stories are prevalent in scripture and in the life of believers as well, and we rejoice when God does powerful things in our lives. But when we pray and pray, and the thorn is not removed, it can cause us to think we are being punished or that our faith is not strong enough. When the storm is not calmed, when we are not told to pick up our mat and walk, when our eyes are not opened, we ask God why. We ask him why we are so stuck and why he wants us like that?
Perhaps, but the music video ultimately goes beyond the song. If the song is filled with despair, the music video adds some dialogue that is not on the actual album. One of the banditos (friends) looks up at the tower where Clancy has now become Nico and laments, “What now? I really liked this Clancy.” The Torchbearer (played by drummer Josh Dun) says, “Yeah, me too. But that’s not Clancy up there anymore. He’s out there somewhere. And we will try again.” The bandito asks, “Again?” The Torchbearer replies, “Always.”
Clancy can’t save himself. I don’t know why I was even hoping for that. If he could save himself from Nico, then he wouldn’t need a rescuer. And where would that leave the rest of us, who also don’t have the power within ourselves to defeat the darkness? Clancy couldn’t defeat Nico by himself because he is not the Torchbearer. There is no secret power or light inside of him that can overcome … inside of him there is only … Nico. They are the same person, Fight Club style.
It will take a light from the outside to rescue, and that light will never give up searching for him.
Clancy, like ourselves, needs a divine torchbearer who never gives up searching for us, one who “always lives to intercede” for us (Heb 7:25). We too need a light that never believes you are too far beyond his reach, even when we can’t fight our own demons … especially when we can’t fight them. He may not always fix, but he will never ever abandon or give up on us.
