Songfacts®:

• Switchfoot vocalist Jon Foreman told the background to the song on Land Of Broken Hearts: "During our stay in South Africa, I was struck by the sharp contrasts that comprise our experience on the planet. Areas of poverty and wealth, faces of hope and despair, stories of racial tension and reconciliation- this is the story of humanity. Beautiful at times, horrifying at times, our hands are capable of such good and evil. I wanted a song that captured the darkness and the light of a life filled with so many conflicting emotions. To have a song that starts and ends with the joy and laugher of children felt fitting. For me, it helps to bring light into the dark room of human behavior."
  
  "It's a dark, self-indicting song to sing, because I'm guilty as well," Foreman continued. "I'm culpable in the state of the world. Who can claim innocence? Who can honestly say, 'I have, in no way, lived my life at the expense of those around me.' Religion is an odd word to our ears. Words like religion, faith, and spirituality are often relegated to the irrelevant, obscurity of our childhood fantasies. Like the monster under the bed, we outgrow them and move on. And agnostic naturalism becomes the cold, sterile replacement. How could religion have anything to do with our post-modern, post-Christian world?"
  
  "When Greg Graffin, Bad Religion's frontman, calls naturalism his religion, I think he's right," Foreman added. "Your religion might not include transcendent elements, it might not include a long history of tradition. Show me your pocketbook and I will show you your religion. Show me your Google search history and I will show you your religion. You can talk all you want about your beliefs, but without action your fancy words about faith mean very little. Religion is best shown in the way we spend our time here on the planet. What you say you believe is not your religion, your religion is the way you treat the orphans and the widows here on the planet."
• Keyboardist Jerome Fontamillas said during a Spotify track-by-track: "What makes this song special is that while we were traveling, we met up with some kids in South Africa and we decided to record them and have them sing at the beginning of this song, and it really inspired us – that everyday you're alive, you change the world."