While many of these songs celebrate God's faithfulness and sing praise to him, there

are others which are considerably more downcast - angry at God for abandoning them and questioning

His faithfulness.

In fact, the Bible has many stories of devout, holy people who questioned God: from Job who

lost everything, to David King of the Israelites who wrote many of those psalms, and even Jesus

himself, in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Doubting God is never portrayed in the Bible as a negative thought you should avoid, but

rather a step toward understanding God a little better.

In 2015, two darling indie folk artists wrote their own psalms - two albums about times

in their own lives when their faith was tested, and felt like they had been abandoned by God.

Sufjan Stevens has never been shy in his music about his Christian faith.

His album Seven Swans is entirely devoted to the weaving of personal experiences with

bible stories, and he often conflates ideas of romantic love with his personal relationship

to Jesus.

(“To be alone with me, you went upon a tree.”)

Sufjan grew up in Michigan and was primarily raised by his father and stepmother, however

he spent a number of childhood summers in Oregon with his biological mother Carrie and

stepfather Lowell.

Carrie suffered from depression, schizophrenia and alcoholism, so Sufjan's relationship

with his mother had always been fairly strained.

In many ways he was closer to Lowell, who was able to provide stability for Carrie's

children during these trips.

Lowell has even been involved in Sufjan's music career, helping to run his record label

Asthmatic Kitty, and the pair releasing the album “Aporia” together in March of 2020.

On his 2015 album Carrie & Lowell, Sufjan offers small vignettes of his time in Oregon,

and particularly of his mother.

In Should Have Known Better Sufjan recalls a memory of Carrie forgetting about him in

public.

("When I was three, three maybe four, she left us at the video store.")

Her negligence is also apparent in the song Eugene, as Sufjan speaks of trying to attract

his mother's attention.

("Remember I pulled at your shirt, I dropped the ashtray on the floor.

I just wanted to be near you.)

He suggests that Carrie cared more about her smoking than she did her children.

("Some part of me was lost in your sleeve where you hid your cigarettes, no I'll never

forget.")

Despite being quite distant from his mother for much of his life, Sufjan found himself

deeply affected by her death from stomach cancer in 2012.

"Her death was so devastating to me because of the vacancy within me.

I was trying to gather as much as I could of her, in my mind, my memory, my recollections,

but I have nothing.

It felt unsolvable.

There is definitely a deep regret and grief and anger."

But Sufjan isn't interested in laying blame - in the very first song, he tells Carrie

that he forgives her.

(“I forgive you mother, I can hear you, and I long to be near you.”)

His mother's death has not brought feelings of resentment toward her, but of love and

missed opportunities.

The song Fourth of July puts Sufjan in conversation with Carrie at her deathbed.

There is an intimacy between the two, as they trade pet names and try to console one another.

(“Shall we look at the moon, my little loon, why do you cry?”)

It's a relationship that they likely didn't experience while she was alive.

Sufjan's frustrations are instead directed toward God.

In Drawn to the Blood he once again likens his faith to a physical relationship, depicting

God as an abusive partner.

(“The strength of his arm / my lover caught me off-guard.”)

“The strength of his arm” is a reference to Luke 1:51, a line from a song that Mary

the mother of Jesus sings when she discovers she is pregnant.

(“He has shown strength with his arm, He has scattered the proud in the imagination

of their hearts.”)

Sufjan questions why God has turned around and used their righteous strength against

him.

(“For my prayer has always been love / what did I do to deserve this?”)

Sufjan also uses the biblical story of Samson and Delilah to suggest the betrayal he feels,

and conjures an image of broken faith with a one-winged dove.

This crisis of faith sent Sufjan down a path of self-destructive behaviours - he shared

with Pitchfork how engaging in the same patterns as his mother somehow connected him to her.

He mentions this in No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross - making references to substance

abuse and self-harm, and ending the song with its lamentful title.

(“There's no shade in the shadow of the cross.”)

The foot of the cross is a place of peace and comfort for Christians, a position of

supplication that serves as a reminder of the saving grace of Jesus.

But for Sufjan, he no longer feels comfort at the foot of the cross, where its shade

may be cast over him.

The Only Thing sees Sufjan at his lowest, the greatest depths of his despair.

He contemplates the various ways he could end his own life, but looks for any signs

not to: from stories in star constellations, to meanings depicted in water stains on the

bathtub.

With the final verse however, he tips the song's structure on its head.

Instead of looking for ways to die, he finds a reason to live.

(“The only reason why I continue at all / faith in reason, I wasted my life playing

dumb.”)

And in John, My Beloved, he ends the song with a declaration of faith, more upfront

than he has ever been before in his music: ("Jesus, I need you, be near me, come shield

me from fossils that fall on my head.")

But ultimately there is very little resolution to Sufjan's anguish.

There is no narrative order to these songs, and each one is filled with mixed emotions.

In much the same way that Sufjan felt abandoned by Carrie in her life, it was in her death

that he felt abandoned by God.

If Sufjan's faith was tested by tragedy, Julien Baker is the opposite.

She opens her 2015 album Sprained Ankle with the spiritual disconnection she feels in her

everyday life.

(“Do you think that there's a way I'd ever get so far / that you'd ask me where

I'd been like I ask you where you are?”)

Julien often feels distant from God, but when she goes on in the song to tell the story

of a car crash, she places God at the scene.

("I know I saw your hand when I went out and wrapped my car, around the streetlamp.")

The way she ambiguously implicates God in this accident could suggest she's either blaming

them for causing it to happen, or thanking them for protecting her in it.

This traffic incident is just one of many moments on Sprained Ankle that Julien finds

God while at her lowest.

Throughout her life Julien has battled against her own mind and body.

She struggles with substance addiction, mentioning at various points alcohol, drugs and cigarettes.

And she speaks of her deteriorated mental health, which has led to self-harm.

Julien paints herself as someone who spends more time in a hospital bed than a church

pew.

She feels at odds with her own body, comparing it to dirty clothes and dilapidated furniture.

The album title itself is a reference to an injury that prevents you from moving forward

and represents Julien's perceived weakness of her own flesh - a common thread throughout

the New Testament.

But it's in this weakness that she seemingly feels the closest to God.

Her picture of Jesus is the one who spends time with the poor, oppressed and suffering,

not the holy and righteous.

Suffering and redemption go hand-in-hand for Julien, in much the same way it did for Jesus

on the cross.

She equates the two on the song Everybody Does: ("Cause I'm interested, and our carpenter

is so elegant at placing splinters right beneath my nails, where I cannot dig them out.")

While this is a grotesque image of the pain she endures in life and attributes to God,

it also shares the same imagery as the crucifixion: nails and splinters.

In the same way that Sufjan conflates personal relationships with his faith, Julien places

her human expectations onto God.

(“You're gonna run when you find out who I am.”)

On its surface, Everybody Does reads like a song about fearing rejection from a friend

or lover, but it's this rejection and abandonment coming from God that Julien fears; the same

abandonment Sufjan fears and received from both his mother and Heavenly Father.

(“You're gonna run, it's alright, everybody does.”)

Julien understands that in order for salvation to occur, there needs to exist a brokenness

which requires divine intervention.

It's from this dichotomy of pain and peace that stems her on-and-off-again relationship

with God, and her response mirrors this.

On the track Rejoice the expressions of Julien's mind and body are released from her mouth.

Addiction through “choking on smoke”, intimacy with God in “singing your praise”,

and spiritual disconnection when she “rejoices and complains”.

But she finally realises that God is present not only in her brokenness, but every aspect

of her life.

(“But I think there's a God and hears either way.”)

Julien now recognises that she doesn't have to be self-destructive and at her lowest in

order to feel close to God.

But habits are hard to break, and on the album's closer Go Home we find Julien in a familiar

position: succumbing to her addictions and in a state of helplessness, having to ask

friends to come pick her up and take her home.

But in the second verse she switches from talking to friends to talking to God, confident

that he is watching over her, regardless of whether she's feeling physically broken

or spiritually disconnected.

And in her last line of the album, she asks God to take her Home - to Heaven.

(“I'm tired of washing my hands / God, I want to go home.”)

The separation from God that Julien felt in the album's first line has been closed by

its final one, and she ends the album with a rendition of a modern hymn, In Christ Alone

(my personal favourite worship song), while a preacher delivers a sermon in the background.

Both Julien Baker and Sufjan Stevens are not considered to be Christian artists; they are

singer-songwriters whose faith plays an essential role in their music, and whose music is an

expression of worship.

As a Christian and lover of music myself, I've always felt at odds with Contemporary

Christian Music, guilty that I struggle to be moved by many worship songs when entirely

secular music has provided me with deep spiritual experiences.

But albums such as Sprained Ankle and Carrie & Lowell bring me closer to God in a way that

much Contemporary Christian Music doesn't.

These are not airbrushed depictions of God and uplifting statements of unwavering faith

- they are full of doubts, fears and insecurities, honest accounts of people trying their best

and often failing.

Human stories and emotions that are relatable to the spiritual and non-spiritual alike.