Cannibal!

Track nine is the angriest song on the record, and it should be. Cannibal! is what happens when you watch the household of faith devour itself and you finally stop being polite about it. This ain't flesh and bone, this is holy halls turned danger zone. Smilin' faces, switchblade tongues, say "amen" then they pull the gun. I have watched it. I have, God forgive me, done it. Eat your brother - say it's not.

The song names the species exactly. Tone police, doctrine cop. You don't build, you just won't stop. And it asks the question that ought to stop a man cold - too busy fightin' inside the gate, wonder why the fields lay waste. People are dying all around us, never knowing Christ, and the watchman is busy gnawing on the man next to him on the wall. That is not zeal. That is cannibalism with a Bible reference.

But hear the bridge, because the song is not against discipline - it is against the counterfeit of it. Mark the divisive, warn them once, warn them twice, cut it loose. Scripture tells us to avoid those who would divide, and the song says it too. The point is the next line - not every fight is faithfulness, not every shout is righteousness. And then it gives the only cure there has ever been for a church eating its own. Christ was killed once for all, not so you could watch the brethren fall. Drop the knife. Lift the Son. The cross already did the only cutting that needed doing.