“Philippians 3:20-21” deals with the theological question of how a just God could allow a person to be suicidal.

Track: “Philippians 3:20-21”
Album: The Life of the World to Come (2009)

Philippians 3:20-21 talks of Jesus making the bodies of humans like his own after their death. It’s open to interpretation beyond that, but it generally means that you’ll join Jesus and be redeemed (physically and otherwise) with him once you die. The song “Philippians 3:20-21” is about how anything that requires you to die to feel better is a really tough sell.

John Darnielle wrote the song about David Foster Wallace, who hung himself because he couldn’t stand to be alive. The chemicals in his brain conspired against him, as they do in everyone with some kind of mental illness. John worked professionally with the mentally ill as a younger man and it’s a cause that is close to his heart. For Wallace specifically, he has said that he thinks one of the most difficult messages of Christianity is that it only deals with redemption and solutions post-mortem. In the song, “nice people said he was with God now,” which is a polite way to speak of the dead, but it didn’t do anything for him while he was alive.

For a person whose life is plagued by thoughts of suicide and self-harm, the idea that death will provide a spiritual respite is cold comfort. The rest of the chorus talks of the voices of angels being “smoke alarms,” since they signal the fire of his death but don’t do anything to stop the flames from coming. John has said that he thinks it’s difficult to understand how a kind and loving God could not give a person the chemistry needed to fend off dark thoughts and survive, and the “neuroleptics and electric shock” of “Philippians 3:20-21” are his way of saying it would be easier to believe if the salvation worked a little bit earlier.