This post analyzes Andrew Rannells’ version of Praying for Time” by George Michael (1990). You can watch the performance here:

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CJL0hLvFlP-/?igshid=fjo4ydzgbpjj

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While George Michael’s “Praying for Time” from 1990 would rarely be thought of as a Christmas song, in 2020, Andrew Rannells makes it so when he soulfully sings us the realities of our actions, and provides a path to redemption by repairing society by fixing ourselves.

In this poignant, peaceful bellowing of Praying for Time, Andrew Rannells soulfully re-enacts George Michael’s explanation of what inevitably happens when the powerful exploit the built-in inequalities of capitalism to create a zealous, faithless religion with the Selfish ME supplanting the Great I AM (Exodus 3:14) as the “one true God” to worship.

Listen to the prompt for self-reflection when Andrew matter-of-factly sings George Michael’s lyrics of how we, in society, willingly permit the perversion of core Western concepts of “All People Are Created Equal” and “Individual Freedom” when:

“[T]he rich declare themselves poor, and most of us are not sure if we have too much. But we’ll take our chances because God stopped keeping score. …And you cling to the things they sold you. Did you cover your eyes when they told you that He can’t come back because He has no children to come back for?”

When 2020 upended our world, it revealed the fragility of not only our capitalist economy that treats human labor and humans as expendable, but also revealed that the drive of needing “things” for the sake of having “things” is not inherent to humans, but is sold to us by the wealthy as if people are inherently flawed without the company’s product to fix them. Our calloused hearts are manufactured by design through capitalism; an inevitable by-product of this political-economic system that pits the “poor” against the “less-poor” while the wealthy pray to the idol of “Trickle-Down-Tax-Relief” that has never worked, but peddled by the Snake-Oil salespeople in political parties and Fox/CNN/MSNBC entertainers.

When charity is designed as a tax deduction instead of a virtuous act of giving, its act is an economic benefit. Therefore, it can never truly be virtuous because it is never altruistic if you benefit from it.

“These are the days of the empty hand where you hold onto what you can and charity is a coat you wear twice a year.”

If you only give money because you don’t have the time, it’s the equivalent of praying outside of your prayer closet (Matthew 6:6), and giving only when you personally benefit from it.

If you refuse to give the street beggar $5.00 because ‘he’s only going to buy alcohol with it’ when your wine glass overflows at home, this “giving-with-strings-attached” embodies the ethos of a capitalist society where your employer will only give you a raise if you deserve it, rather than if the cost of living warrants it. This social norm trickles down on the interactive level of person-to-person as seen in the lyric:

“This is the Year of the Hungry Man whose place is in the past, hand-in-hand with ignorance and legitimate excuses.”

Our excuses to deny charity on the individual level may be legitimate, and our ignorance of these wealth inequalities may be an outcome of our cultural focus on “accumulating things,” but we can right the ship through other means which holds our billionaires accountable. If billionaires need 274 years—or 3 lifetimes living to 90 years old—to go through just ONE of their billions by spending $10K a day, then our capitalist system has a serious and unjustifiable flaw.

This flaw is blatantly apparent when billionaires are wealthier in December of 2020 than they were in January of 2020 but a two-parent family has to work two full-time jobs and two-part-time “gigs” to eke a living with barely any extras beyond debt and get tossed a whopping $600 or $1,200 dollars 9 months too late. Reallocating resources is what we’ve done for the past 50 years, but it’s just been in the wrong direction—from the have-nots to the haves. Unlike cars, ships need a very small shift in direction to make a huge turn to make society work for the needs of the many instead of the needs of the one (Spock, in just about any Star Trek episode you like).

As somber as the lyrics are when matched with the haunting tones of this rendition, there is a Christmas message of redemption, forgiveness, and most importantly, self-transformation if we allow it to unfold openly.

“It’s hard to love. There’s so much to hate. Hanging onto hope when there is no hope to speak of. And the wounded skies above say, ‘It’s much, too much, too late.’ So maybe we should all be praying for time.”

While it may be true that, today, it feels like it's hard to love, and you may feel that there's so much to hate about the hard-right-turn society has made, perhaps the Divine calls us through the wounded skies to say that we can right-this-ship through introspection and collective action shaped by a re-trusting again of humanity through a re-focusing on St. Augustine's call for Philia--a sense of community love.

The self-reflection prompted by George Michael 30 years ago is unfortunately still relevant today. 2020 was a gift that we just didn’t realize as one. 2020 answered our prayers for more time to think through how our actions reverberate through society. 2020 is answering our prayers for more time to reimagine a society that embraces a different kind of freedom than the one we as a society perverted—a freedom where one group can no longer follow a ‘to-hell-with-society’ attitude and write the rules for their own benefit. 2020 answered our prayers for more time to reconnect with our Higher Power to heal ourselves and, in doing so, healing the society we create through our actions. Perhaps it’s time to stop merely praying for time, but to utilize the time we have been gifted in 2020 to reconnect ourselves back to our communities. After all, “faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead” (James 2:17).