He Has 99 Problems & We Shouldn’t Be One.
For those of you who keep up with the music industry, you already know that Jay Z and Kayne West recently released their highly anticipated CD: Watch The Throne. I have to admit, and dare I might say as a Christian, that this collaboration between the two of them will probably go down in the books as nothing less than Pure Creative Genius, but as I was listening to the CD today, I started to think…
I’ve noticed lately that ‘Church Folk’ are fed up with artists like Jay Z and Kayne, more specifically Jay. Its like, we read the lyrics to his songs, and as soon as he says something that goes against our beliefs and morals, we’re so quick to make a fist, leave one finger out, and point it directly at him, inevitably making him the big bad wolf.
I understand why it’s easy for us to do this, I really do. I’ve heard the things he raps about, the stuff he represents, and most of it, if not all of it, promotes a bad message, but what about the other parts to our beliefs and morals? The ones that simply ask us to show grace and compassion for those who don’t know Jesus, or those who have decided to ‘live in the world’?
As believers, why do we get so shocked when people living in the world promote worldly things? Have we really become ‘Father Like’ with an ‘I expected so much more from you’ attitude?
Could it be possible that we’ve been hiding a judgmental and ‘I’m better than you are’ spirit behind our attempts to ‘let our light shine’ and be holy and righteous?
It’s a scary thought that sadly might have some truth to it.
On this album there’s a track titled New Day. It’s a track that you usually don’t expect guys like Jay Z and Kayne to rap about, yet it’s a brutally honest record with a somewhat somber tone to it, and if you really take a step back, and read beyond the lyrics, you would realize that maybe Jay Z and Kayne are people after all, people with hearts, people with problems, people who may just possibly have some regrets with a few of their life choices.
Sounds like a place we’ve all been to at one point or another in our own personal life, doesn’t it? The place we were at before we were rescued, forgiven, and released to live an abundant life with the hopes of leading others to have that same opportunity. Yet here we are, the church, the ones who are supposed to be reaching out to them, bashing them on our Twitter accounts and writing things like “How DARE he rap about that…ect…ect…” on our Facebook pages. Yes, we don’t have to agree or believe in everything a person may promote, but our desire to stand up for what we know to be right should never give us the power to write somebody off.
Do we really believe he needs us to sit here and remind him of his mistakes and everything he’s doing ‘wrong’ by unashamedly bashing him on our public internet accounts? Call me crazy, but at the end of the day, I actually believe a few genuine prayers for him in private will have a greater impact than all of our public rebukes.
Yes, he has 99 problems, and we shouldn’t be one.
Here’s to more grace and compassion,
JG

Tsquare 2:36 pm on March 5, 2010 Permalink |
Great Blog!……There’s always something here to make me laugh…Keep doing what ya do