Is simplicity best
Or simply the easiest?
The narrowest path
Is always the holiest
So walk on barefoot for me
Suffer some misery
If you want my love
If you want my love
Man will survive
The harshest conditions
And stay alive
Through difficult decisions
So make up your mind for me
Walk the line for me
If you want my love
If you want my love
Idle talk and hollow promises
Cheating Judases, doubting Thomases
Don't just stand there and shout it
Do something about it
You can fulfill
Your wildest ambitions
And I'm sure you will
Lose your inhibitions
So open yourself for me
Risk your health for me
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
Or simply the easiest?
The narrowest path
Is always the holiest
So walk on barefoot for me
Suffer some misery
If you want my love
If you want my love
Man will survive
The harshest conditions
And stay alive
Through difficult decisions
So make up your mind for me
Walk the line for me
If you want my love
If you want my love
Idle talk and hollow promises
Cheating Judases, doubting Thomases
Don't just stand there and shout it
Do something about it
You can fulfill
Your wildest ambitions
And I'm sure you will
Lose your inhibitions
So open yourself for me
Risk your health for me
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
If you want my love
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To understand this song you have to understand the social reality back in early 90's.The song was totally wrapped with religious metaphors. This song has nothing to do with religion or Christianity as many people think. You have to understand inside the song who is talking and to whom the words are addressed.
Judas is a humble confession of a terminal contagious illness person (HIV)asking for a cruel proof of pure love.
Now add to this person the blessing of being physically beautiful, and still looking good (like a bad apple, beautiful red outside and rotten inside). Then someone ambitiously interested approach, and with an illness confession try to find out how far the person will go "if you want my love". The person tell and confess how miserably and hard his life turned, or how bad the life for the other person also will be, and if still interested, and true love is behind this to the point of risking his health, then you will have my love .
Also you might be wondering what the metaphoric song tittle "Judas" has to do with this, simple... back to early 90's whoever were ill with hiv/aids avoid to tell their reality, and the bug was spread like a Judas kiss but in bed.
Martin is the Judas, luring a Vanilla into BDSM. His Vanilla-Luring Style is really quite cute.
"So walk on barefoot for me
Suffer some misery
If you want my love"
"You can fulfill
Your wildest ambitions
And I'm sure you will
Lose your inhibitions
So open yourself for me
Risk your health for me
If you want my love"
In other words, he's telling the little Vanilla that if he/she wants to be loved...then they must take the pain and torture.
I also think the lines: "The narrowest path / Is always the holiest" might suggest that limiting yourself and not expanding leads the subject to being "holy". The song appears more sinister than spiritually moving.
Second off, saying that anybody that doesn't care what happens after you die, is stubborn. So you know all of us? I'm Atheist and I can tell you I can honestly die happily without the "Lord". You're the stubborn one with that comment and don't think you have the right to call somebody stubborn because they haven't found the "Lord".
The clue is the heartbeat.
Personally I interpret 'Judas' as an answer from God to Man's prayers, delivered in a way much like a conversation one would have with an unfaithful or troubled lover, someone He loves enough to console lovingly and criticize sarcastically; to offer salvation to, or a solution to his or her problems.
He accusingly and humorously mocks Man's modern ideas and adages:
"Is simplicity best"
Or simply the easiest?
He offers insight:
The narrowest path
Is always the holiest
He offers us the way to achieve His love, or the 'solution' to his lover's romantic problems:
So walk on barefoot for me - Set yourself aside; let go; live selflessly
Suffer some misery - Grow up; lose your naivete
If you want my love
He simplistically and truthfully speaks to ease mankind's constant anxieties and fears (this is a timeless verse in that it will always be applicable to us -- we will always have our mundane, forgettable daily anxieties, be them of dying alone, terrorism, climate change) with His divine insight. He tries to quell his lover's anxieties so she will relax:
Man will survive
The harshest conditions
And stay alive
Through difficult decisions
So that she will have the ability ("You have the ability" - Get Right With Me) to make a decision with a clarity of thought and a strong conviction and accept Him, to go out of her way to be worthy of His love:
So make up your mind for me
Walk the line for me
If you want my love
He criticizes His lover as hypocritical, conniving, unfaithful. He condemns all of mankind like a gilted lover would: You say one thing but do another, you do not keep the promises you make. You are dishonest, selfish, you doubt me.
Idle talk
And hollow promises
Cheating Judases
Doubting Thomases
If you want my love:
Don't just stand there and shout it
Do something about it
The final line being repeated over and over, "If you want my love", feels like a complete act of desperation. I always felt this song was a demonstration of neediness and lack of self-love, but that might be a reach. The speaker wants unfeasible and hyperbolic acts that could prove his loved one's love for him (like suffering or risking yourself, if you take it literally). But proving your love is not something that is necessary when you're secure about a relationship, which could show that the speaker is insecure. One doesn't need to constantly prove oneself to the other as a way of showing that he/she cares for him. It comes naturally. However, the speaker wants validation in the form of complete devotion.
That's just one interpretation though, I can see many lines meaning different things that could lead to whole other interpretations as we can find in here. And I love this.