Hip hop and sound doctrine: where to draw the line?
It’s no secret that when it comes to getting the facts straight, pop culture is one big sloppy mess. The information highway has no speed limit, and because of this, information often runs unchecked, unfiltered, and collides with just about any and all things sacred.
Take religion for example. When pop culture celebrities pontificate on the evils of religion or weigh in with little or no regard for the latest in scholarship or even with an eye to the historical circumstances of their opinions, they invite more confusion than calm.
Hip hop artists are not immune to this drive. Whether they are Christian or Muslim, the raw theological claims that come out in some songs simply cannot do the issues they are representing proper justice in the space of 16 bars.
I’ll take two examples, the first being Rakim’s new song “Holy Are You” on his latest album The Seventh Seal. At one point in the song, Rakim, a known Muslim, boldly declares that Jesus didn’t walk on water and that this is a “parable.” That’s all well and good if you know what a parable is and how it is supposed to function rhetorically. I don’t want to question if Jesus’ walking on water “did” or “did not” happen as an actual event. Rather, by looking at how the walking on water account appears within the gospel will clue us in to its rhetorical use. That is, depending upon how it’s communicated will tell us a lot about how it should be interpreted.
In the gospels when Jesus is said to have walked on water, most scholars agree it happens as part of the narrative (the same way the gospel tells us Jesus journeyed into Jerusalem for Passover or Jesus was tried before the Sanhedrin). On the other hand, the prescriptive way in which Jesus uses parables is always within the context of when the narrative moves from a third person to first person speaker (namely when Jesus himself is telling a story within the larger gospel story). Is Jesus saying he walked on water? No. The incident is reported by the writer of the gospel as an event in Jesus’ life and not put in the mouth of Jesus as the speaker. By understanding then that the writer of the gospel intended this event to be interpreted as a life-event, we are now free to continue to the next part of the question: is it true? But this is a question that can’t be settled simply by a rhetoric device and demands a response in faith. Nevertheless, the conclusion is clear: Rakim is wrong in calling this a parable in the life of Jesus. It doesn’t function in that manner.
My second example comes from a more personal experience. I was recently verbally attacked by a very pushy and quite frankly insolent Christian Fundamentalist who insisted that Jay-Z’s lyrics on “Empire State of Mind” were blatantly anti-Christian and if I were going to defend them on any level, I was ridiculous. Not really the most “Christian” way to start off a conversation.
Looking at the song in context and not merely peeling back two verses, I pointed out that throughout the song Jay-Z is warning that the lure of the big city is enough to destroy any person (spiritual vitality being a part of that person). When Jay-Z spits “life begins where the church ends,” it is important not to read into this use of “life” the same meaning that a master writer like Paul had in mind when he uses it figurative of Christ’s “life-giving” gift of salvation. Neither is it fair to accuse Jay-Z of reversing the meaning by appropriating those terms for unbelievers. Why? Because Shawn Carter is not a trained theologian. Prior to that, Jay-Z says “if Jesus can’t save you…” Well, of course the Christian would want to confess that Jesus can save anybody and would find the suggestion (if this was what Jay-Z was saying) offensive. But Jay-Z is not calling Jesus impotent and unable to save. Instead, he is saying “if you don’t want Jesus than this is the kind of life you can live in New York.” No, it’s not a message of salvation. It’s not even a message encouraging you to live this way. Jay-Z is simply stating a fact, not making a recommendation. When I heard those lines a couple more times, it harkened me back to the prophets of the Old Testament warning against the pleasures of sinful living by explaining how the spiritual life suffers as a result. No, I’m not comparing Jay-Z to a prophet. He is a rapper.
My point in writing this blog is whether the artist is Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist most of the time they are not speaking as trained theologians. They are laymen. You wouldn’t go to the McDonald’s drive thru window to get your tooth fixed. You would see a dentist. So why go to a rapper to get your theology? The muddy waters of serious theological study get even muddier when they flow downstream to the general public who unskillfully tries to make aggrandizing declarations about their beliefs, usually on bigger stages and at the expense of precision.
