Love Is The Answer

This is by NO means a Christian song. This song's concept goes WAY beyond religion. This song is a call to the world to open its eyes and look inside.

There is no easy way around it. Pride, religion, power; none of it will buy the world the peace, hence, no easy way around it, and it's a call to the warmongers, the ignorant, and the power-hungry who supposedly run the world to look past their own power struggles and warped perspective, so that they need not be afraid to have a human conscience, and see that it's the only way that they can make the world right.

If one attempts to shove one’s beliefs down another’s throat, it merely becomes an expectorant, possibly a catalyst for war. This doesn’t just apply to Christianity. It’s everywhere.

The "homeless and never heard" stanza is aimed at those of a younger generation who are ignored by the supposed "grown-ups" that run everything according to their warped standards for the rest of the world around them. The loneliness is not born of a possible absence of Christ in someone, because this applies to everyone. This stanza tells these brave souls not to give up, and that there is still another chance for the world to hear a cry for help from humanity before it’s too late. It states that it is "worth just another try" to attempt to open people's eyes to unconditional love BEYOND RELIGION, which just so happens to be the reason behind most of the hatred and conflict in this world.

The "man in your heart" is nothing more and nothing less than one's own conscience, the voice that tells you to love unconditionally. If the world wants to heal itself and end its conflicts, one worldwide cease-fire can be enough to end war if we can just look inside and ask ourselves if we're doing the right thing all in all, if we’re wronging anyone, and if we are doing what we can do to love each other.

Religion is not the only way people can love one another. I AM BY NO MEANS DENOUNCING CHRIST. I am stating that this concept goes beyond religion. Atheists can love. Muslims can love. Hindus, Christians, Jews, Agnostics, and all other creeds and races have the capacity to love as human beings. This song is about loving each other out of general human principle, not because some book tells us to do it. This song asks people to look past whatever possible personal battles or power struggles they have, be it for power, politics, petty differences, or religion, and just love everyone for being human, just the same as they are. People had consciences before Jesus was even born, and if we can just use them in the name of unconditional love, religious differences or homogenizing religion won’t even be a concern.

Nobody "missed" anything in these lyrics. This is a call to the people of the world to actually look inside their hearts and use them. The overall message is right in front of our eyes, whether or not there’s a Book in front of them. The song’s message, as well as the album’s message, is stated at the end of the liner notes of the album "Oops! Wrong Planet":

"Use your heads, use your hearts, save yourselves."

The message is clearer than WORDS ON PAPER.

Peace. --K.S.

P.S. The cover to Second Wind in itself is a sign to cast religion and whatever petty differences one has aside, and going along with the album’s lyrics, WAKE UP.

To those who not only say this ISN’T a Christian song, but vilify Christianity, I ask you to please not conflate true Christianity as exemplified by Christ Jesus with the vile, commercialized, adulterated garbage that is most of modern Christianity and indeed most of the history of so-called Christianity since the “great apostasy” that occurred after the death of the apostles near the end of the first century that Jesus prophecied would come. Indeed, the message of this song is universal, but it has so many terms from and references to the Bible that it isn’t a stretch for Christians to take it that way. Also, Jesus had a unique perspective different from prior religions and it wouldn’t be right to not give him credit for his breakthroughs related to love being the answer. Light of the world, for instance. Also, one of you said something about something existing before Jesus, but he is the firstborn of creation, existing before the angels and he was his father’s master worker in creating the universe billions of years ago at the very least. It is true, in my opinion, that most religion is a snare and a racket, but not all. Some Christian’s are more than nominal and live by the love that Christ showed. As far as him coming to the earth to save us by dying for us not making sense as someone said, it makes perfect sense if you actually read the Bible. It is spelled out clearly. Adam, a perfect man, lost his perfection and life and his children inherited sin and lost out on living forever. Jesus, another perfect man, had to die to balance that out. To pay the ransom. He did that out of love. The life of the man, Jesus, who was born with no knowledge of his pre-human existence, until he was baptized and had his memories restored by his father, actually died for all time as a human for all mankind. There is no greater love than this. The Bible also calls out false Christians and they will be reckoned with when all false religion is destroyed and when Christ Jesus rules as King over all the earth, love will be the answer. The Bible has been misrepresented and used for so much badness, but that isn’t Jesus’ fault. All the sins perpetrated by false Christians and other false religions will be undone under Christ Jesus’ millennial rule. It’s a beautiful thing.

[Edit: Typos]

hey wiseguy wrong this is a christain base song, but i do agree with you on some of the things your saying, but its not religion that all chirstains look for but faith in christ, the bible reminds us that it was religous people who murdered chirst and only thourgh a personal relationship with chirst can we begain to heal, not some guy telling us how we should serve God, it is religous sect that as always been the wrong way to go, jesus said i am the way the truth the life.

religion is not christ ,and christ is not religion, and man is religion ,and religion is man.

Interestingly, Todd Rundgren has emphatically stated that he's not Christian but has always been intrigued by the idealism and mythical aspect of ``Christian love.''

Read more: faqs.org/lyrics/Todd-Rundgren-s-Utopia-Love-Is-The-Answer.html

Several years ago, my original band (EverAfter) once opened a show for Todd Riundgren at a club in Seattle. I was able so speak with him for a few minutes and I told him how great a song this was. Unfortunately he doesn't get credit for it as much since England Dan and John Ford Coley made it a mega-hit. But Todd's version is the best and he wrote it!

I heard this song growing up. I have been through absolute hell this year. I woke up one morning with these words ringing in my head. I never had the lyrics speK to me and never had searched for meaning in them. I put the song on youtibenand listened to it. I cried. Light of the Worldnis what Jesus called himself and His desciples. Are we alive or just a dying planet -what what are the chances? This, to me, is a unifying song. I know and love, athiests, agnostics, Christians, Jews, etc. Religion? New don't believe it serves any purpose aside from dividing people. Just like other differences. But what is the one thing that everyone in the human race believez in? Love. I believe the day people are able to see past thei differences and truly love others, unconditionally, will be the day Jesus, the embodiment of love within each of us, will return. The Light of the World, Shine on me, Love is the answer Jesus. Not the I hate all people whosoever don't believe exactly as I do Jesus.

This song is my ANTHEM! The way I see it, Todd is a soldier of fortune, looking for true love and peace in a world that's seriously lacking in both. The part where he sings about how lonely this world is, and how we're all just homeless boys and girls...rings so true! Very profound song...down to the rousing chorus of the last stanza.

Yes yes yes! I am down with that!

This is one of the best songs ever written, it has been an anthem and mantra since the week the album was released. Why anyone would want to hijack my beloved song and call it Christian. It has nothing to do with pitiful superstitions. It has nothing to do with delusions and lies of any kind. It has nothing to do with ancient and degenerate, slaving, enemy of freedom, misogynist Paulist crap about some Son of God, Born as a man, to be murdered by man, in order to save Mankind. That story, doesn't even make sense to children. It is absurd to the point of ridiculous. Because in the emotional reprise, Todd screams what some interpreter thinks is Lord, you think it is Christian. The reprise according to my listen is "Love will be a reason, yeah yeah" and Lord or Lawd, or simply Let from let it shine. The song is freaking secular. If it were Christian, it would have Hell in it, and fortunately Todd gives us The Marriage of Heaven and Hell on the same awesome album. There he says, "Let us raise our glass" "And we'll drink a toast" "And the Devil will dance" "With the Holy Ghost" "And the good and the wicked" "The strong and frail" "They will all join hands" "At the end of the world" "Its the wrong world" "I must be on the wrong planet" "I've been checking it out"

Now that is strait out of the Bible, getting drunk watching the Devil and the Holy Ghost on Dancing with the Stars. That's got to be in that Book after Revelation. Or on the fabulous Trapped., first song side A.

"Brother John saw visions of God" "So they put him in chains" "For acting so odd" "As the crowd shouted off with his head" "The priest said have mercy" "Let's burn him instead."

Now that sounds like a bunch of Christians there, drooling and speaking in tongues, burning witches or anyone who saw the light differently. Great minds like Galileo. Going around burning and enslaving, causing pain and pestilence, leaving waste in their way. The witch burnings got so bad that in some places in Germany, there were no women or girls left. They had all been burned. They had an all out Christian attack on women lasting some 150 years. All it took was an accusation, and the accuser got half the victims property. Through agonizing torture, they extracted confessions and the poor victim was caged without any counsel or religious forgiveness until she was strangled and burned or burned alive. This was the Christian thing to do, to proclaim your faith, to burn witches, and the Bible says, thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, so if it says there is witches in the bible, and we can kill them, lets go find them. Never before or since has a culture been so insane as to wage war on their own women. So Martin Luther came along, and nailed his 99 thesis on the church door, strait out of ground zero of the witch burnings.

Luther was enlightened, was he not, so you would think he would gripe about all the asshole Christians burning all the good women of his land.

Not so. The Protestants burned just as many as the Catholics for another 150 years.

For anyone who thinks this excellent song has the least to do with Christianity, the Bible says you should pluck out your eye. Don't pollute the beautiful meaning of this song with your vile and heathen superstition.

May Todd have mercy on your soul.