The Hand, The Furnace, The Straight Face

I think this song is about redemption The hand is Christ's hand, The Furnace is probably hell and The Straight face is the straight face of a man realizing what his sin has cost him. It is about the choice between eternal life and death. And the lifestyle that follows the choice of eternal life.

I think "The hand, the furnace, the straight face" means throwing everything in this life into the fire and keeping a straight face, not caring that its gone. It could also be comparing the salvation process to refining gold in a furnace.

im sure that title has somthing to do with the book of daniel. the hand being the hand of God that appeared and wrote on the wall to the king of babylon. the fonace that shadrack meshac and abednigo were put in but didnt get burnt. and the strait face of the big statue thing that daniel had a vision of. im not sure how that would relate to this song tho.

When I first heard the term "The Hand, The Furnace, The Straight Face" my initial visual image was of a man setting his hand on top of a furnace showing absolutely no pain, straight face, nothing, either no phasing him or he's hiding the pain.

I'll go with the hiding the pain interpretation. The song seems to be about finding solace from pain, from the memories that haunt us. Perhaps the term Hand, Furnace, Straight Face is referencing disguising pain and not actually fixing it by just removing our hand from the furnace. No?

So close ominousoat, this song is about a man who has his hand on a burning hot furnace, stove if you will, and having a straight face and not even noticing the heat because he is so focused on the Lord. The furnace being that of the devil and his many temptations. I often times encourage myself with this song when dealing with lust because as a Christian I must be so focused on the Lord to be able to defeat the devil and his schemes. I don't believe this song is about salvation however, just because of the hand thing, how does that fit in? I think these are all intertwined about one man to ultimately give the extreme example of obedience to God.

QUIET!!! IT'S 4 AM!!!

... love it.

I agree with barrel of monkeys in that this song is about fighting of temptations in our lives, whatever they may be. I think the main gist of the song is that fighting these temptations and doing our best to be faithful to God isn't an easy thing, but rather its very difficult. "Following with frequency won't become a place to lay our heads" Just because we are Christians doesn't mean that we can just sit back and take life easy, but rather we have to take it like a man. "The hand. The Furnace. The straight face." We take it like a man and even when we are burning our hand on the furnace (or struggling so much with temptation that it is painful) we will keep on fighting it with a straight face.

this song is killer

For the longest time I’ve been trying to figure out what this song was talking about and what I was understanding was exactly what barrel.of.monkeys said. But there were too many lines that weren’t sitting right with me, mainly those in the second verse. So I started looking more closely at the lyrics, and I realized something: this song is not so much the person who has searched and found rest as I had originally thought, but rather it’s about the person who is resisting and avoiding changing. It’s like Andrew is having a conversation with a man who is refusing to admit he’s not strong enough by on his own; he’s telling the man, “You’re playing with fire and you don’t realize you’re burning yourself.”

Andrew starts by explaining that there is something deep inside us - the things we keep hidden within (most likely the negative things), the wounds we’ve suffered in past experiences, and our deepest needs and desires - requires us to make a choice. We are not at rest but we can be (rest here is referring not to physical rest and sleep but to mental, spiritual, and emotional sleeplessness and rest). Repeating the way we’ve always done things is not enough to bring us the rest we need.

In the chorus, Andrew says he’s sought after this rest, but has failed His pride has gotten in the way, and he’s destroyed his innocence. He continues, saying that there won’t be any making of amends here; what’s done is done. But instead let his failure serve as an example or warning to you because it’s never too late to start over. Andrew says if you don’t believe him, this is your evidence, the sleeplessness that he still finds himself in.

In the second verse, he gets up front and personal with the listener. “Do you get the point? Are you hearing what I’m saying?” This isn’t a time for messing around. You have take a step first, because you can’t just feel this way. You have to do something about it first - this feeling follows action. So here’s your choice — either you can say find an excuse, saying that because Andrew has failed in the past, you don’t have to listen to him and instead just ignore his warning… Or you can realize that anyone by their own strength is worthless and incapable. Everyone fails and so will you, if you do it without God.

Andrew ends with this: the hand, the furnace, the straight face. In other words, “you’re playing with fire, and you don’t realize that if you continue you’re going to get burned” (It may also mean something along the lines of “stick your hand in/on the furnace, and try to keep a straight face…tell me it doesn’t hurt, cause I know you can’t do that").

To interpret the title "The Hand, the Furnace, the Straight Face", I think it has to do with the seeming contradiction of God's predestination and God's punishment. For example, God predestines some to hell and punishment.

The hand is God's omnipotence–God's power. "Couldn't God have made it so that all people go to heaven?" The furnace is hell. The straight face is the question of whether God is fair in doing this. "If God punishes people for doing things that he knew they would do before he created them, is that fair?"

So this song title speaks of the Problem of Evil. "The Hand, the Furnace, the Straight Face".

^^^ i like his interpritation.

^^^ i like his interpritation.