The other day a friend, who works with 'at-risk' youth in Wilmington, DE, and I were driving around listening to Tupac. We both can't stand the derogatory stuff Tupac had to say about women and his lust for violence. However, there is no way to ignore the urgency and prophetic nature of his music. I am not suggesting that anyone glorify Tupac's rather insane, and perhaps underutilized, life. But we'd all be stupid to ignore what he had to say. Some of the urgent cries for help and change in his music speak directly to our brokenness. I often think that his music is some of the most direct messages of man's 'fallen nature' that there is. Unfortunately, I don't think Tupac had enough answers as to how things could change and he (like most of us) chose death (in behaviors not exactly literally) as an alternative to the world's evil. And you and I can do the same, we are given the choice to pick between life and death each day. Seeing the pain out there in and around us and continuing to live in (and even embrace) that evil as an escape is no escape at all. But it is often the only option that we see.This brought up an earlier blog idea I'd not yet posted. Many moons ago (October) I set out on my own personal odyssey from Los Angeles to San Francisco via the arid Central Valley and spent a night in the tourist haven of Fresno. Fresno is somewhat of a backwater and the Central Valley is considered the back alley or at least 'armpit' of the magical and mythical California. Having lived 4 years in Jersey I wasn't too worried about this, in fact I was embracing it in order to see where all of our food comes from and see something beyond the surfing fantasy of The OC or The Hills. Whilst driving, somewhere past Bakersfield in an incredibly arid, smoggy and flat terrain surrounded by agriculture on all sides-I heard a new(er) Wyclef song and it hit me, hard. Now I don't care too much for Mr. Jean or the rest of the crew on this cut (Lil Wayne, Akon, Nia) but that isn't the point, I can rag on them later. Despite not being a big fan, they did a heck of job with the track "Sweetest Girl" from Wyclef's new cd Carnival II: Memoirs of an Immigrant. The song deals with a girl's struggle and decline and sonically is very cinemeatic. The singing and production on this great track is perfect for going 80 through the desert.
Having spent the earlier part of my day driving aimlessly through LA and thinking too much about what 'it' (SoCal, America, suburban, multiculti life) means, hearing this track touched me. "Sweetest Girl" is such a great song to the point where it makes you joyful, but in such a tragic way. Here is a track about something so beautiful and so damaged that it hurts so much it almost makes you feel better.
Like some earlier Tupac work, "Sweetest Girl" is again speaking to the brokenness of the human experience. Akon's re-singing of the old Wu-Tang line 'Cash rules everything around me' from the classic song C.R.E.A.M. is a little derivative, but it speaks a rather nihilistic point that our lives are completely controlled by money and this drive for cash causes us to do all sorts of debased things. In essence it is true, though I don't think it is just money that is 'the root of all evil' as Massive Attack once claimed. Money can surely be evil, but sin in man is the root of it, and man did not start to perform evil once money was invented or capitalism was coined. No, it all goes much much deeper than that.
This song speaks about our contemporary world. And driving through California, the so-called bell-weather for American culture in all its decadent glory was an interesting place to imagine this tune. As I listened to the lyrics, driving through a bleak landscape and imagining teenagers of all shades growing up in a suburban California where who you are is defined but how you dress and the money you have and the car you drive, the song came alive. Sure it's about hookers, but the message of life being defined by money is the essence of the American experience. Sadly 'Clef and company had no new answers for us as to how we should get out of this truly American dilemma, but I feel like he or I or God should give some alternatives to these teenagers in California or wherever they might be. Our life on earth DOESN'T have to be defined by these material things and such superficial pursuits. We can have a different life here on earth.
As the Bible states in Deuteronomy 30:19, "This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him."
This is the alternative; we can have another life, there can be heaven on earth. This song doesn't need to ring so true. There is hope!
The video below isn't anything official as the real one by Wyclef is some stupid thing about refugees that doesn't seem to go with the song, I like this homemade thing.
Just listen to it and think about our country, our young people, our future, and what an alternative can be and IS.
4 comments:
Cash rules everything around me!
"The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil" depending on the translation "the love of money is the root of all evil."
I think that if we pause to consider what money is then we can begin to get to the root of this source of some amount of evil. Money is a representation of how much someone's time is worth to do something. It is an abstract representation of how much time we have spent on something. This is why I hate money. We have to stop to think about what it is.
I'm not saying that we should go back to bartering or a hunter gatherer lifestyle, but that would work. You can't counterfit whether or not you actually killed a deer or gathered enough berries or bullshit your way to more corn in your garden. But as soon as this abstract representation enters the mix, all hell breaks loose.
So what then do we do? I think we should change the whole damned world, flip it on its head, and start taking care of people less fortunate than ourselves. No matter what. Make money, yes. Lots of it, yes. But make it in a way that you can be proud of, in a way that your kids can be proud of, and dare I say it, in a way that God would be proud of; then do something with it to change the world in some small way so that life is better for poor people, for opressed people, for widows, for kids, for the homeless, the mentally ill, the lonely...you get the idea. That's all I got
I still don't buy the argument that once the economies of the world advance or man moved from hunter gatherer to farmer things went hell. I mean adam and eve didn't have any of that nonsense.
Though mark I do think that ur last part, we can and should make money or do whatever we're good at and make money at it but don't do it by ruining the earth. That is my issue, I'm not against companies or what have you, but I'm against money being made with NO CONCERN for anything else. I will not tolerate money to be made at the expense of families, the food supply, cities, regions, the water supply, the air, our minds, our communities, and anything else that is left. I mean come on.
But with no other religion or goal but 'getting mine' in this country (and increasingly our world) I shouldn't be surprised that making $ surpasses everything else.
That is why if we REALLY embrace God we truly can't be controlled by money.
"I still don't buy the argument that once the economies of the world advance or man moved from hunter gatherer to farmer things went hell. I mean adam and eve didn't have any of that nonsense."
I don't either. Sort of. My point is that the love of that economy introduces another level of hell. Money is an abstraction, abstractions separate man from reality and enable him to create a new "reality" (kind of like space vs. cyberspace) in this case the world of "economics"...here's the point: Adam and Eve only had one outlet to exercise their fallen nature--the real world--now we have at least two--the "market" and the "real world"--this magnifies both our potential for good and for evil. Let us consider Cyberspace as an example of what happens when we inroduce abstractions: the potential for good on the internet is limitless--microfinance, blogs, online school, access to information--but so is the potential for evil--identity theft, online predators, porn, fraud--none of the good or bad was created by the internet it is only another outlet for it. My point is praising bartering and gathering is that it limits the outlets for good and evil...you can't fake a tomato.
Now here is why I do "buy the argument." If humanity advances economically faster than it advances morally, ethically, spiritually, whatever you want to call it, we are doomed. Why does communism fail? Greed. Why does democracy fail? Ignorance. Why will capitalism fail? It's based on greed and succeeds when the masses remain ignorant. This is not to say that it can't succeed if the masses are informed, but the fact that it can succeed with out an informed public speaks to its potential for evil.
All this to say: Jesus is the answer. Capitalism, Communism, Democracy, Monarchy, it all works if Christ's call to love your neighbor as yourself is followed by the people, the church, me, you.
But I know you know this, I just needed to vent.
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