Ten Thousand Days and the Theology of Endurance
What a Secular Song Taught Me About Faith That Doesn’t Perform
After “It is finished,” faith rests on completed ground.
The work does not wait to be confirmed. Belief moves forward from what has already been accomplished. What remains is faith lived in trust, not faith searching for resolution.
This reflection begins there.
And Christ remains at the center.
The weight we carry is never the ground we stand on.
Faith does not sustain itself; it rests in the One who endured to the end and now lives to intercede for us. What follows is not a call to strive harder, but an invitation to recognize how Christ’s endurance shapes our own.
Disclaimer: A word before you continue.
What follows is not written from a neutral position. It reflects how I am currently reading Scripture, history, and lived experience together. I bring my assumptions, convictions, and blind spots with me into this reflection.
I am not asking you to adopt these conclusions. I am asking you to slow down, return to the texts, and examine the patterns for yourself. If anything here holds weight, it will do so under careful study. If not, it should be set aside.
You will also encounter selected lyrics from Wings for Marie, Pt. 1 and 10,000 Days (Wings Pt. 2) by the band Tool. These excerpts are used under the principles of fair use, for the purpose of commentary and reflection. The songs are not theological endorsements, and their creators do not speak from a Christian worldview. While I do recognize resonances between the lyrics and biblical themes of endurance and witness, the songs remain secular in nature. If you choose to listen, I encourage you to do so with that context in mind.
This is written as an invitation to discernment, not an appeal to authority.
Most of us learn how to talk about faith long before we learn how to carry it.
We learn the language. We learn the posture. We learn what faithful people are supposed to sound like. What we rarely examine is what happens when faith stops working the way we hoped it would.
Faith often looks strongest from a distance.
When it lives in stories, in other people’s suffering, or in imagined versions of ourselves, it is easy to admire it. We know the language. We know how to sound faithful long before faith ever demands anything costly.
That is why, at least for me, the song 10,000 Days carries so much weight. It leaves faith bare and unembellished.
Maynard James Keenan (the vocalist) has spoken about watching his mother live nearly three decades paralyzed. No recovery. No reversal. Years of prayer that never produced relief. And still, she did not let go of her faith. For a long time, watching his mother endure that kind of suffering did not make God feel trustworthy. It left a sense of distance and silence, with no response in sight.
Wings for Marie / 10,000 Days comes from the far side of endurance. It was written after the struggle had already taken its toll, when nothing remained to be worked through or explained. What emerged carried weight rather than answers.
The clarity that follows settles into recognition.
What comes through is belief that no longer feels compelled to justify itself. What remains is a much more silent question: Can faith still be trusted when relief does not arrive, and endurance becomes the gift that carries it forward?
Scripture has been pressing on that question from the beginning.
We are very good at admiring faith while cost remains theoretical.
“We listen to the tales and romanticize
How we’d follow the path of the hero.” — Lyrics from 10,000 Days
Israel sings on the far side of the Red Sea, then panics days later when thirst replaces triumph. Peter swears loyalty hours before denying Jesus. Confidence comes easily when pressure has not arrived yet. Knowing the story has never been the same thing as inhabiting it.
James confronts that illusion directly. He does not attack belief itself. He exposes belief that never leaves the mouth.
“But be sure you live out the message and do not merely listen to it and so deceive yourselves.” — James 1:22 NET
The deception James names takes root in familiarity. Closeness becomes a substitute for faithfulness, and presence for participation. Religious life can appear sincere while remaining shallow. It gathers and expresses concern. It often falters when nothing improves.
When healing does not come.
When prayer does not resolve.
When endurance replaces hope of relief.
Scripture consistently honors the ones who stay.
Job spends most of his story without answers. Jeremiah warns for decades and watches everything collapse anyway. The prophets die without seeing fulfillment. Hebrews 11 explicitly names those who did not receive the fullness of what was promised, not as failures, but as faithful.
Real witnesses rest their trust in God and stay with suffering as it unfolds.
Spend enough time around people like that and you begin to recognize them. They are the ones who remain present through long seasons without resolution. They keep showing up when nothing changes. Their faith settles into their posture, their speech, and their patience. Over time, it carries weight quietly, without drawing attention to itself.
Other responses to suffering tend to gather around it without entering it.
That is why this line from the song cuts so deeply:
“Ignorant siblings at the congregation
Gather around spewing sympathy.” — Lyrics From 10,000 Days
It sounds harsh, but Scripture itself draws the same distinction. Sympathy without faithfulness shows up everywhere. Job’s friends sit silently with him for seven days, and that is the last moment they get it right. Once explanations begin, accusation is not far behind.
Jesus names the same problem in His own time:
“‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me,” —Matthew 15:8 NET
Words can be correct while the heart remains untouched. Nearness does not guarantee allegiance.
Judas embodies that truth in its most unsettling form. He is not an outsider. He is not hostile. He walks with Jesus. He hears the teaching firsthand. He participates in ministry. He is trusted with money.
But when cost presses in, something already hollow gives way.
Judas’s betrayal reaches its visible moment in Gethsemane. Scripture points to a fracture already present long before that night. Divided loyalties. Quiet divergence. A heart slowly detaching while everything still appeared faithful.
Betrayal surfaces after a long period of formation. It exposes what has been taking shape beneath the surface.
Faith reduced to association can remain close to Jesus indefinitely, until allegiance is required.
What makes 10,000 Days so arresting for me is that it never tries to resolve this tension. After decades of watching his mother endure without bitterness or payoff, belief no longer feels theoretical. Her life becomes the evidence.
The burden shifts.
“Set as I am in my ways and my arrogance
Burden of proof tossed upon non-believers.” — Lyrics From 10,000 Days
The witness itself bears the weight. Scripture repeatedly affirms the authority of faith that has been lived rather than explained.
Her suffering is released into rest.
“Ten thousand days in the fire is long enough.
You’re going home.” — Lyrics From 10,000 Days
No lesson. No answer. Just rest.
And that forces the question Scripture keeps asking beneath every story of faith.
When everything else is stripped away, what has endured??
Not what we admired.
Not what we repeated.
But what we carried when belief demanded endurance.
Religious theatre fades. Lived faith remains.
That same tension appears when Paul turns to formation.
Romans 12:2 speaks to formation at the level of perception, where people are shaped long before they notice the effects.
“Do not be conformed to this world.”
The language Paul uses describes being pressed into a pattern. Passive. Ongoing. Something that happens while we are busy living. The concern is not creation itself, but this age. The assumptions we absorb about what counts as wisdom, responsibility, success, or realism.
Paul points to the danger of letting the present age shape judgment while religious language stays familiar.
Scripture is full of that pattern:
Israel adopts surrounding values while still worshiping Yahweh.
The Pharisees preserve Scripture while losing mercy.
The Corinthian church celebrates spiritual gifts while mirroring cultural pride.
Paul calls people to let their understanding be reshaped by what God says is good and life-giving.
“Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
Renewal here is not about memorizing verses or improving behavior. It is about renovation at the level of perception. In biblical thought, the mind is where meaning is assigned and judgments are formed.
That is why Paul links renewal to discernment. The ability to test what is genuine instead of absorbing whatever feels normal.
Conformity does not require abandoning Christianity. Often it works by baptizing cultural instincts with religious language.
Faith becomes output driven.
Truth becomes tribal.
Reaction replaces reflection.
Comfort begins to sound like wisdom.
Paul ties obedience to how people learn to see and understand the world. The way we live is shaped by what we recognize as God’s will, and that understanding is always being formed. Renewal, then, is not a one-time thing.
That same clarity helps explain spiritual conflict.
When fear rises and confusion spreads, it is easy to assume darkness is advancing. Scripture suggests the opposite.
The enemy operates within limits, and his influence is restricted. Scripture describes him as a ruler of this age in terms of influence rather than possession. His work shows up through distortion, accusation, and deception.
Creation is not within his power.
That is why ancient nations experienced their gods as powerful. Behind idols were real spiritual beings with limited authority. They could mimic signs, stir fear, and draw allegiance. Faith in Yahweh required trust without spectacle.
But imitation always collapses.
Egypt’s magicians reach a limit.
Baal’s prophets exhaust themselves in noise and blood.
Fire falls only when the true God speaks.
The cross marks the decisive break. Whatever claim hostile powers once held was stripped away. What remains is persuasion, not rule.
Which is why identity confusion is the enemy’s most effective tool.
He gains ground through confusion and doubt.
The battlefield is internal.
The weapon is suggestion.
The serpent reframes reality and plants doubt about identity and intention. Psychology names the resulting tension cognitive dissonance. Scripture names it deception.
The lies are rarely dramatic:
Nothing has really changed.
Freedom must not be complete.
If growth were real, this would not still hurt.
Agreement is where the damage happens.
Once accepted, those narratives reshape posture. Over time, behavior aligns with belief, and belief feels confirmed simply because it has been lived out.
This operates through participation. Agreement with what is untrue gives the enemy room to work.
That is why Jesus anchors freedom in truth, not effort:
“and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” — John 8:32 NET
Freedom begins where false agreement ends.
Christ’s victory stands complete. Confusion, when left unaddressed, continues to shape influence.
As identity loses clarity, faith turns inward. Struggle begins to register as failure. Endurance means staying when strength is gone.
Alignment restores stability. When believers ground themselves in what God has already spoken, the inner strain gives way.
Fear loosens its hold.
Deception loses coherence.
Clarity takes root.
Everything returns to witness.
Real faith carries weight without needing to be seen. It stays present and holds steady across time.
Faith isn’t just about getting out, but about choosing to stay and keep going.
Formation shaped by Christ produces endurance rather than momentary belief.
As perception is renewed, conformity loosens its hold. Deception loses coherence. Identity settles into truth strong enough to carry weight.
Authority takes shape there.
In the end, real faith doesn’t prove itself with outcomes. It is carried, often in silence, often without answers, and its weight becomes its witness.
Endurance is not the measure of our worth but the evidence of Christ alive in us. We are not held up by our strength or understanding but by the One who bore the full weight of suffering and still did not turn away. Even when faith carries no reward we can see, no clarity we can name, and no escape we can take, it shares in the pattern of Christ, who endured the cross for the joy set before Him. The burden is not ours to prove. The cross has already spoken. Our witness is not performance. It is participation in a finished work.
When faith no longer props up reputation or supplies answers that settle everything, what are you trusting God with, and what are you still holding for yourself?
When belief no longer produces change or relief, what does trust look like?
Have I confused religious proximity (language, posture, ritual) with internal transformation?
What assumptions about faith and suffering need to be unlearned?
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Fair Use Notice:
Lyrics from Wings for Marie, Pt. 1 and 10,000 Days (Wings Pt. 2) by Tool are used under the principles of fair use for the purpose of commentary, criticism, and theological reflection. All rights to the original lyrics and recordings belong to their respective copyright holders. — Tool. 10,000 Days. Volcano Entertainment, 2006.