I Have Forgiven Jesus - Morrissey

October 5, 2007

Not too many people could get away with a song entitled "I Have Forgiven Jesus".. but it is the kind of cheeky line at which Morrissey excels. Jesus is the forgiver par excellence.. so we laugh nervously to find Morrissey offering to forgive Jesus. If that laugh was all the song offered it would not be worth writing abou; it is the undercurrent of serious complaint that we will be examining.

The opening lines sketch a brief portrait of a kid everyone could like:

I was a good kid,
I wouldn't do you no harm.
I was a nice kid,
With a nice paper round

The implication being that the singer was at one point at home in his world: "nice". That idyll is quickly interrupted:

But Jesus hurt me,
When he deserted me,
but, I have forgiven you Jesus
For all the desire,
You placed in me when there's nothing I can do with this desire...

That spiritual loss appears to be the initial cause for anger directed at Jesus. That is followed by a more specific charge: the desire that is felt by the singer, but for which there is no place.. no acceptable end.

I see no use in tip-toeing around the fact that Morrissey is talking about homosexuality. It is true that these lines provide no explicit gender reference, but they reference contemporary discussions about gay marriage and homosexuality broadly. If individuals are gay or lesbian by no choice of their own (which is pretty clearly the case), then why should they be denied relationships which will bring satisfaction and fulfillment to their lives? The church is apt to tell people that they must refuse to act on those desires.. somehow bury them inside. This song strides right into this debate and challenges the perceived authority behind these views: Jesus.

If I had to set a point at which a knowledge of the complexity of sexuality and gender dawned on me, it would be in reading the teeny bop magazines that included interviews and photos of musicians like Robert Smith of the Cure and Morrissey (then) of the Smiths. Robert Smith had the whole make-up and lipstick thing going while Morrissey was oddly cagey in interviews. He claimed to be celibate.. a word which I needed to look up in the dictionary. I took his statement at face value and even turned over in my head images of the gray cool that could come from not worrying about relationships.. from being celibate.

The Smiths' songs are tough to pin down in terms of gender.. but the hints are there, such as in the following lines from "You Handsome Devil":

And when we're in your scholarly room
who will swallow whom?
when we're in your scholarly room
who will swallow whom?
you handsome devil...

If we want a Smiths song that comes close to the sentiment of "I have Forgiven Jesus" we can look to "The Boy with the Thorn in His Side":

The boy with the thorn in his side
behind the hatred there lies
a murderous desire for love
how can they look into my eyes
and still they don't believe me
how can they hear me say those words
and still they don't believe me...

This time we begin with an angry boy.. not a "nice boy" with a paper round. This anger hides an intense desire for love, and the character wonders how people can hear him speak of love and still somehow not believe him.

At first glance the song appears to be free of overt religious sentiment, but that "thorn in his side" is a pretty direct reference to Paul in the New Testament, who writes in 2 Corinthians 12.7-9:

To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

The nature of this "thorn in the flesh" has been debated for a very long time.. commentators have concluded that it is a physical ailment or some struggle with lust. When Morrissey picks up on this image he is settling the character into the position of someone who is involved in a long term unwinnable struggle. The nature of the struggle is undefined, but it could easily represent the struggle of a young gay man. I would argue that given Morrissey's broader body of work that interpretation makes the most sense.

Coming back to "I Have Forgiven Jesus", Morrissey closes with a series of sharp lines:

Why did you give me so much desire,
When there is nowhere I can go to offload this desire?
And why did you give me so much love in a loveless world,
When there is no one I can turn to
To unlock all this love?
And why did you stick in self deprecating bones and skin?
Jesus do you hate me?

Ostensibly these lines are attacks on Jesus.. but there is nothing in the song that convinces me that Morrissey is really thinking about Jesus. Jesus happens to be the figure that unites believers.. and so he is dragged into the song as a fictional character to attack real positions on homosexual love. The point is to give the listener some feeling for the loss that comes with being barred from love.. for the crime of this denial.

One more note: only Morrissey could call label himself "self-deprecating" in the same song in which he offers to forgive Jesus! One more of those brilliant touches.. which is a central part of the enjoyment of his songs.