The song, Staring Into the Abyss, becomes live on Spotify this Friday- Oct. 16.
Last spring, I spent a good stretch with Friedrich Nietzsche. I read large portions of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, worked through On the Genealogy of Morals, returned to the Madman passage in The Gay Science, and made my way through most of Kaufmann’s book.It put me in a rather strange mood, to be honest.
That wasn’t casual reading. It was more like stepping into a different mental world for a while.
I’ve asked myself why I picked him up in the first place. Curiosity? The desire to understand someone whose influence reaches so far? Or was there a little intellectual résumé-building mixed in? Probably some of all of that. I ought to be honest about my motives, especially when reading someone who made me question them.
There is no denying the man’s intellect. Even in translation, the depth and range of his thinking can be breathtaking. I followed the arguments, sat with the tension, and let him press on some fault lines.
I played in his sandbox for a bit.
What I experienced was more than an encounter with ideas. It felt like a test of what I actually believed. What holds when it is challenged? What have I thought through? What have I simply inherited, repeated, or absorbed?
For a while, that was energizing. Then it became clarifying. At some point, I realized I wasn’t moving toward agreement - I was moving toward distinction.
A few things stayed with me. His suspicion of systems made me more attentive to the assumptions inside my own frameworks. I came away wanting to examine those assumptions more honestly, with a little less confidence in my ability to have everything neatly arranged.
I was also drawn to the willingness to ask a question that puts something at risk. There is a difference between asking a clever question and asking one whose answer might require something of you.
And throughout the reading, I found myself thinking about how easily we outsource our thinking—to teachers, movements, cultural trends, even art. Reading about his break with Wagner sharpened that question for me: What is shaping me, and have I actually examined its influence?
That concern reaches into the growing AI age, too. I want these tools to help us discover, inquire, and learn. I worry about letting them do so much of our thinking that we stop doing the work ourselves. There is a responsibility in learning that convenience cannot carry for us.
But the deepest clarification was about where I stand. For me, reality is ultimately personal. There is a Father to trust, a Savior to know, and grace I receive from Someone who knows me. That conviction became clearer during my time with Nietzsche.
Eventually, I knew I had read enough for now. I could respect his intellect, learn from the encounter, and recognize how far apart we remained.
Some thinkers sharpen you and unsettle you. You can be grateful for the visit without making their world your permanent residence.
It was time to close that chapter and move on. But one question followed me out of it: What am I becoming while I contend with the darkness?
His words stayed with me after I closed the books. In particular, I kept coming back to the warning in Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 146:
“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”
That warning gave “Staring into the Abyss” its central image. But the song’s story began before that season of reading, with a blog post and a line from The Dark Knight:
“You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
When I first heard it, I thought it was a clever line. The older I get, the more it feels like a mirror.
I didn’t set out to become the villain. I just kept living.
You make decisions. Some are necessary. Some are mistaken. Some seem right at the time and look different years later. You disappoint people. People disappoint you. You gather wounds, learn to protect yourself, and discover that protection can become a habit.
Eventually, you begin to wonder what all of it is doing to you.
The original post was my attempt to put that uneasiness into words. It became a song. Then, after reading Nietzsche last spring, I went back and completely revised it—lyrically and musically.
The question felt closer now. I was thinking about the man I was becoming while trying to stand against the things I believed were wrong.
The first verse begins with the confidence of youth:
Bright-eyed, fearless, full of fire,
I thought I knew the man I'd be.
I knew the villains from the heroes,
And which one looked like me.
I remember that confidence. There is something beautiful about it, and something dangerous. It is easier to imagine ourselves as courageous and principled before those principles have been tested by disappointment, exhaustion, or the temptation to get even.
Then comes the discovery that changes the song:
I went looking for the darkness—
Found some of it in me.
That is a difficult confession. It is also one I cannot afford to avoid.
There is real evil in the world. There are things we ought to resist, people we ought to protect, and moments when silence is a failure of love. But standing for a good cause does not make every impulse in me good. I can be right about an injustice and wrong in the way I treat someone. I can defend the truth and enjoy humiliating the person who disagrees.
I can win an argument and carry its bitterness home.
That is how Nietzsche’s warning reaches me. The battle can begin shaping the person fighting it. Eventually, the anger feels necessary. The armor feels like part of my skin.
Some of the most uncomfortable lines in the revised song are in the second verse:
I learned suspicion dressed as wisdom,
Learned to keep my mercy small.
Built my walls and called them boundaries,
Till I couldn't feel at all.
Experience should teach us discernment. Healthy boundaries matter. But I have to ask whether every wall I build is serving a healthy purpose. Sometimes I am protecting a wound I have never surrendered. Sometimes “I know how people are” becomes my excuse for withholding kindness before anyone has had a chance to receive it.
I may see through illusions more quickly now. I also miss the comfort of having them.
And seeing clearly brings its own question:
But knowing everything that's broken
Doesn't tell you how to last.
You can recognize deception and still need help with your own heart. You can understand what went wrong and still have no idea how to forgive. Awareness alone cannot give me the tenderness I am losing.
This is where the song turns toward Jesus.
I am not suggesting that Nietzsche was pointing toward the Christian answer I find here. His warning becomes the starting point for my own examination, and that examination brings me back to Christ.
As the ugliness around me—and within me—becomes harder to ignore, Jesus becomes more radiant.
He endured betrayal, cruelty, injustice, abandonment, and death. He knew the evil He faced. He suffered it without becoming evil Himself.
Hebrews 4:15 speaks of a Savior who understands our weakness and was tempted, yet remained without sin. That matters to me more as I grow older. His purity endured suffering. His mercy survived rejection.
The bridge reaches for that wonder:
No bitterness upon His tongue,
No vengeance in His wounded hands.
He carried love into the grave
And walked back out again.
The resurrection gives the final chorus somewhere to go. The darkness has been faced, and death has been overcome.
There's a light the dark can't swallow,
There's a stone that's rolled away.
Easter feels increasingly necessary to me. I need forgiveness for what I have done. I need renewal in what I am becoming. I need a hope that can survive both the world’s brokenness and my own.
The grace of God feels like oxygen.
When the song says, “I don’t need to be the hero,” I hear relief from the burden of saving myself. I still have responsibilities. There are still battles worth fighting. But I can surrender the need to justify myself in every encounter, settle every score, and make my own strength sufficient.
I need the One who entered death and came back.
The song ends with a prayer:
So take the anger, take the armor,
Take the man I tried to be.
I went looking for a revolution—
Lord, begin it here in me.
That is where I wanted to leave it. I have plenty of opinions about what needs to change in the world. This song asks whether I am willing to let God change me.
I have lived long enough to recognize some of the villain in myself.
I have also lived long enough to know how much I need the Savior who never became one.
Lord, begin it here in me.
If you want to read more about my time with Nietzsche:
Where Do We Go When the Light Fades Away?
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