And I can't change
Even if I tried
Even if I wanted to
(Same Love, Macklemore)
I'm beautiful in my way
'Cause God makes no mistakes
I'm on the right track, baby
I was born this way
(Born this Way, Lady Gaga)
Walt: No, really, I blame the government.
Jesse: You either run from things or you face them, Mr. White.
Walt: What exactly does that mean?
Jesse: I learned it in rehab. It's all about accepting who you really are. I accept who I am.
Walt: And who are you?
Jesse: I'm the bad guy.
(Breaking Bad, Season 3, episode 1, "No Mas")
You might recognize these lyrics or the excerpt from Breaking Bad. They tie into our sermon a couple weeks ago when we closed with a reminder that our world is filled with voices. Some of these are compelling, incredibly well-produced, catchy, and singable. Some of these voices are teachers, billboards, sit-coms, YouTube clips, Tweets, Facebook entries, and blogs. The voices in our lives speak from TV shows like Breaking Bad and through movies and even classic forms like newspapers and the radio (that thing your parents play in the car sometimes). Many of these voices have an emphatic opinion, a stance on truth, and a worldview that they want you to adopt. Macklemore certainly does. And man, when it comes in the form of the next pop song or slick TV drama, we are all ears.
In a world like this the cacophony can be overwhelming. The barrage of voices fills our eyes and ears and the effect can be dizzying. Who is to say which voice is right and which one is wrong? Is it the university professor or the cook at McDonald's? Is it a pastor or the President? Is it the majority or the minority?
The premise of Macklemore's song is that homosexuality is both right and hard-wired into our bodies. Thus, we have as much right to express ourselves in this way as African-Americans have to vote and use all the same restaurants and hotels as whites. In other words, our sexuality is not a moral issue but a purely biological and physical one. And therefore it's a human rights issue. There is no right and wrong with hair and skin color, so how can there be with sexuality? Lady Gaga obviously agrees.
Of course, the song is right that hatred, bigotry, and racism are horrible sins. The amount of pain they have caused in our world is simply incalculable. Societies, generations, and even continents bear the scars of it. And the song is right that Christian love must be "patient" and "kind" just as 1 Corinthians 13:4 commands.
But amidst this truth in the song are falsities that we won't discern unless we come at this song with a solid grasp on our Bibles. As Christians in a world as filled with voices as ours is, we must—we absolutely must—have an ear for God's Word. The loudest voice in our mind and the clearest voice in our conscience must be the Bible. It is the voice that interprets all others. It speaks truth into our confusion, light into our darkness, and holiness into our immorality. It does this so that we might know and obey and trust in the true and living God—and in doing so we will find eternal life. Along the way we will also learn the truth about identity, sexuality, and even humanity.
A thorough knowledge of the Bible is the only way we will understand that love, truth, and righteousness must stand together. They are a cord of three strands that is not to be broken: "Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up" (Eph. 4:15); "Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth" (1 Cor. 13:6). So, not only must our love be righteous and truthful, but our truth must be loving. The world severs what God unites.
There is simply no way to interpret a pop song, movie, or university professor without looking at God's Word—regularly, carefully, humbly, and fully. Macklemore is right on some things, but wrong on many things in Same Love. Breaking Bad's Jesse Pinkman is right that "we're the bad guy," and he continues to reap for the sinful choices he makes, but the series leaves out the source of the moral universe the characters inhabit: God. Wrong and right in Breaking Bad are basically defined as whether they hurt or help people. The bad of Walter White hurts people; the good is the actions and characters that help people. Wrong and right do impact people, but they are impossible to understand apart from God and his revelation in the Bible. On the positive side, the series goes much further in exploring good and bad than most things produced these days (though I had to stop watching it because of this exploration of our depravity).
The culture abounds in technicolor, digitized truth-claims that come at us from a thousand different directions. Without God's Word we will hear the beat, love the music, obsess about the TV series, and assume it's giving us the real truth. We must be those who turn and re-turn to the Bible. This is where we will find light, truth, and hope. This is also where we learn what true love is like, the kind of love that rejoices with the truth and lovingly speaks that truth.
Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; 2 but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. 3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. Psalm 1:1-3
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