“Start each day with a clean slate,” he implores. Find what? He’s not telling, and it may be because he doesn’t know any more than you do, and that is exciting to him. “ ‘Cause you’re gonna find” is the vague, unexplained conclusion that drives his optimism. It’s when Johnston moves into lines like “And yet if you find yourself in the dark, and you’re left holding the bag” and “Sometimes you might want to give up, but keep that chin up” that the listener encounters Johnston’s unadulterated message of hope. This loose connection supports the biblical basis for the lyrics: Johnston is much more likely to have written this song strictly out of inspiration from reading the passages in Ephesians than by constructing the theme himself and finding biblical references to incorporate. A rejection of carnal exploration in lieu of emotional love certainly has only tangential relations to the practices of dismissing one’s anger and expressing forgiveness. The messages presented by these lyrics vary. ) His belief in Christianity appears to be unwavering, but these lyrics are much more than a banner wave for dogma they are simply a plea for people to get along with each other.
(Whether you believe this to be good advice or not, it is a sentiment that has been supported very recently by sleep studies. Johnston’s message falls in line with a popular maxim for couples that may have initially developed from the Ephesians passage itself: don’t go to bed angry. In fact, the cover version by Clem Snide that appears on The Late Great Daniel Johnston: Discovered Covered represents a reincarnation of this bearing the modified title “ Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Your Grievience”. What drew my attention to this song was the fact that Johnston sings “grievience” instead of “grievances,” as the title would have the listener anticipating (grievience is not yet a word recognized by any dictionary, although an internet search reveals it to be rarely used synonymously with grievance). “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Your Grievances”, (not to be confused with the more succinctly titled “Grievances”, in which Johnston lists grievances against an ex-romance) focuses on several Biblical lines, notably Ephesians 4:19 (“Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness,” compared to “Respect love of the heart over lust of the flesh”), 4:24 (“And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness,” compared to “Do yourself a favor: become your own savior”), and 4:26 (cited in the epigraph, compared to a really obvious line). Ephesians 4:26-27, "Be angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: Neither give place to the devil."įocusing on the imperatives delivered by the author of Ephesians ( not necessarily Paul ), Daniel Johnston explicates a few choice passages to explain his own interpretation of the book’s instructions.
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