Forgiveness

Maybe I'm insane, and maybe I'm the only person who does this, but I've managed to cheapen the concept of forgiveness.  In my infinite human wisdom, I've taken what is far and away the most beautiful part of faith, the part that saves, and the part that best demonstrates the love of God, and I've made it weak and inconsequential.  It most certainly is not.

I suppose that I have come to imagine my sin as gone and passed, forgiven as soon as it is done (which is true), and therefore irrelevant, almost as if God never even sees it.  Jesus takes my sin immediately, the sin is punished immediately, and the event is over and I am on right-standing with God immediately.  All of this is true, but it's missing something: forgiveness.  There is grace and mercy, but not forgiveness.  Before the Just God deals with the problem that sin creates (he must destroy it, because he is holy), he forgives us, and there is nothing more beautiful.

The moment where the eternal, just, holy, perfect, and indescribable Adonai Elohim sabaoth (Lord God of hosts) sees our sin in all of its grotesqueness, truly grasping what an offense it is (something we can never quite get a hold of), and forgives us is indescribably beautiful and absolutely crucial to being moved by the gospel.  It is the moment of shame that I often forget to have, where God knows me for who and what I am: a sinner deserving of judgement.  It is the moment where I must prostrate myself before my judge and beg for something I know that I don't deserve, something I never could deserve.  It is the moment before Christ takes my sin, and is punished for it, and I walk off scott-free.  In this moment, fully aware of my sin and my ugliness, God looks upon me and says:

"I forgive you; I love you more."

Read that again, and think about what that means.  "I love you more."  As the bride of Christ, I think this is a good example.  Imagine that you have a wife, and she commits adultery.  She runs away from you and the oath that binds you.  And when she comes home, no matter how many times she goes out or how impenitent she is, aware of the fact that she will do it again, you forgive her.  You know what she did, but you forgive her, because you love her more than the sin she commits, even though it causes you enormous amounts of pain every single time.

As Christians we commit adultery every single day, and I can always remember that I have been forgiven, that my sin was paid for by Christ, and that I may stand before God blameless.  But I always manage to skip over that moment, before my sin is taken and paid for (if such a moment exists) where God looks upon me and my sin, and forgives.  That moment where He loves me more than he hates the sin I commit.  That blows me away.

Beautiful.

Hallelujah (An Objective Review)

           Lecrae has a new single, “Hallelujah.”  I have listened to it, and (at the risk of being banished from the Christian rap world for eternity) I don’t like it.  Not only don’t I like it, I think it was objectively bad.  Before you all burn me in effigy, give me an opportunity to defend my view (without criticizing all that God has done through Lecrae).

            Firstly – the song is a direct rip off of Rick Ross’ “Blowin’ Money Fast.”  Ross’ chorus can be rapped over Lecrae’s and there’s hardly a note off.  I am not a fan of Rick Ross as a rapper because his flow is the epitome of repetition and musical stagnation, so when Lecrae follows the same pattern, I start to get worried.  That said, there is a legitimate case for trying to bring “hallelujah” back to Christianity, but that case was made for the song “Overdose,” which suffers similarly repetitive lyrical structure.  I was willing to buy it then, I’m not anymore; at some point the repetition of a theme (musical or otherwise) merely promotes that theme, rather than productively reclaiming it.  Imitation is the highest form of flattery.

            Secondly – Lecrae started using accents.  When I first heard the second verse, I had to do a double take to make sure it was him and not some featured artist.  The last prominent artist to distort his voice that way (that immediately comes to mind) was Eminem.  In the song “Not Afraid” he effectively apologizes for his overuse of accents: “Perhaps I ran them accents into the ground, / Relax I ain’t goin’ back to that now.”  Now, if Eminem (who used his accents for humor, generally, not the spread of a serious message) had to publically recant his use of them, then why, pray tell, does Lecrae think this is a valuable addition to his arsenal?

            Finally, and most egregiously, I don’t find Lecrae’s lyrics edifying and convicting.  I have never been in love with his flow, and his rhymes have periodically bothered me since he rhymed “done it” with “Mohammed” (“Death Story”),  but I’ve always been challenged, convicted, and moved by the words he says (whether they rhyme or not).  If you need a refresher on this, listen to the third verse of “Don’t Waste Your Life”: “Suffer, yeah, do it for Christ.”  I am newly and freshly inspired to live my life entirely for my Lord and Savior, and Lecrae has done that with almost every song I’ve heard from him.  Expect “Hallelujah.”  Now, please, don’t misunderstand me, his song has a redemptive message, and is undoubtedly Christian, and some of his lines do have edification (specifically two lines in the middle of the first verse: “Shame on me, ‘cause the blame’s on me, / But hallelujah the Lord showed his grace on me!”).  But it lacks the consistency that has always drawn me to Lecrae. While I think that Trip Lee, Tedashii, and others have outshone Lecrae as technical rappers for a while now, Lecrae always had an indescribable appeal, and I’ve pinpointed that as his incredibly convicting lyrics.  That conviction seems to be lacking in “Hallelujah,” and I don’t find his rapping powerful enough to make up for this loss.

            In closing, I want to say that I do not mean to bash Lecrae.  I love him as much as anyone, but somewhere in the last two years, he has become the favorite stepchild of Christian rap who can do no wrong, and I don’t think that’s true.  So do I love Lecrae?  You know it.  Will I support him and his mission?  Until he stops making records. But will I accept everything he produces as pure gold merely because he’s Lecrae?  Not a chance; and if we want Christian rap to grow and better itself, I don’t think we should.  Critique is an incredibly important part of growth, and I think that “Hallelujah” is the direct product of a lack of criticism.  So Lecrae, God bless you, keep doing what you do, but keep getting better while you’re at it.