from the upcoming urban audio bible project ‘Streetlights’. www.rapzilla.com Video Rating: 4 / 5
Christian Rap/Hip Hop news, events, and lyrics ft. Lecrae, Trip Lee, Tedashii, Flame and more!
Free music this week from a new Christian music website called Grouptune. The site’s main focus is offering big discounts on Christian music, provided they can get enough people to agree to participate in the deals, just like Groupon. (You can check out their FAQ page for more information.) To introduce the site, though, they’ve got 10 song sampler available for free for the next week. Here’s the tracklist:
The sampler is free, but you do need to provide some information to get the deal. As you can see, it’s mostly CCM stuff at the moment, but I’m hoping that once Grouptune launches fully they’ll have deals from rock, hardcore, and hip-hop as well. Time will tell. Anyway, I think the site looks like it’s got a lot of potential, and well worth watching.
Update: I just found out that Tedashii’s “Riot” also one of iTunes Discovery Downloads this week, so if you were just interested in that song, and you’ve already got an iTunes account, you can pick it here without signing up for anything new. Thanks to TFCMB Lorenzo for tipping me off to this!
Motorola Mobility has announced the launch of a smartphone for the Chinese market that offers dual-core, dual-mode and dual-standby. Combining Android 2.3 Gingerbread, a dual-core processor with each core running at 1GHz, and uniquely Chinese features, such as smart dialer, a business card scanner and contact manager.
Guest writer, Stephen Hale is wrapping up a MA in Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary and volunteers with undergraduate commuters at Biola University. He blogs at pushofpikes.wordpress.com. Sooner or later, he will start a program in International Security and Economic Policy at the University of Maryland.
Lady Gaga’s “Judas” is a surprising statement of faith. You may be skeptical, since Gaga has a reputation for scandal. Many assume that any mention she makes of religion must be slanderous. I understand that view; many of her videos are hardly models of Christian virtue. However, if Gaga is given the benefit of the doubt, the video to “Judas” is not at all offensive It’s less than orthodox Christianity, but it’s not at all disrespectful, and the values it does advocate include the rejection of evil.
The song itself attracted attention because of Gaga’s use of religious imagery. In actuality, “Judas” is about a dysfunctional romantic relationship. However, religious imagery was more even more fundamental to the video. In the end, Gaga and the director, Laurieann Gibson selected a narrative for the video that describes a falling away from and return to Jesus, much like the apostle Peter on the night Jesus was betrayed. Gaga’s character returns wholeheartedly to Jesus in the end.
In the video, Gaga uses romantic relationships with members of a biker gang to talk about her faith. Many have noted that the break in the middle of the video (in which the music stops and is replaced by the sounds of the ocean that engulfs Gaga) features a scene reminiscent of Botticcelli’s The Birth of Venus. According to most interpreters, this painting conflates sexuality with divine love. This conflation is fundamental to understanding the entire video.
The video does not tell the same story as the song. The most important shift occurs in a silent break in the middle of the bridge. Before the break (the scene echoing Botticelli, pictured above) there are a number of themes worth highlighting. Gaga stays committed to Jesus. At least twice, Judas approaches her and is rebuffed. This section of the video contrasts sharply with the song: in the song, Gaga clings to Judas, but when the video actually talks about Jesus and Judas, she chooses Jesus. Her faithfulness to Jesus is clear, so when she takes a gun to Judas she expects to assassinate him. However, when she pulls the trigger, she is as surprised as everyone else to find herself kissing him. This scene resonates with bridge lyric on top of it, which hints at being a traitor:In the most Biblical sense/I am beyond repentance/ Fame hooker, prostitute wench, vomits her mind
In the end, Gaga repents, returning to Jesus. After the break, there is a relationship between the lyric and the video, but they are almost opposite in meaning. When the lyric repeats her preference for Judas, the video depicts a return to Jesus. Note the action in the baptismal after the music returns. The lyrics describe her struggle to choose what is right, eventually choosing Judas. In the video, she returns to, and the song climaxes in celebration. When she sings “Jesus is my virtue, and Judas is the demon I cling to, I cling to!” she clings to Jesus, only half enacting the lyric.
Gaga turns from Judas and collapses at Jesus’ feet in sorrowful tears in repentance for having betrayed Him. From this point forward, she is wholly devoted to the Jesus character. Back in the baptismal, Gaga turns her back to Judas, prays, and bows to Jesus! Gaga pushes Judas away, throwing water in his face. It is clear she rejects Judas to embrace Christ, and the standard climax of the pop song behind it explodes in celebration.
However, “Judas” is not a statement of orthodox Christian faith. The narrative is not the message, but a metaphor. Gaga has said the video is a cultural statement, not a religious one. She may be using Jesus to represent good and Judas to represent bad, so that the whole video simply means “embrace the good, even if you formerly embraced the bad.” One is not bound by poor choices or bad situations. This may not be a direct representation of the Christian faith, but it is a message Christianity and the secular culture around us would both celebrate.
The contextualized Jesus presented in her videos is used to make a point smaller than who He is. This is part of the truth, but not all of it. The video is not in opposition to who Christ is, as most of Gaga’s critics would portay it. Here, Gaga is no worse than any common example of pop music. In fact, she’s saying something positive. Because of this, video hardly deserves the response it has received from many Christian critics.
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Lovesliescrushing
Lovesliescrushing — the duo of guitarist Scott Cortez and vocalist Melissa Arpin-Duimstra — have been been releasing abstract shoegazer ambience for roughly two decades now. And when I say “abstract shoegazer ambience”, I mean that in the truest sense of the term. Points of comparison might be My Bloody Valentine, the Cocteau Twins, and perhaps even Sigur Rós at times, but Lovesliescrushing’s music goes even further, eschewing song structures altogether in favor of massive, gossamery veils of pure sound. Using nothing more than heavily manipulated guitars and treated vocals (and no synthesizers), the duo creates soundscapes that can be as foreboding and unnerving as they are beautiful and otherworldly. Lovesliescrushing’s latest release is a virtual 7″ that is free for the downloading and serves as an excellent introduction to their music. It’s not for everyone, but I find it to be a sublime listening experience.
Cut Copy
I’ve been meaning to write about Cut Copy’s Zonoscope ever since the beginning of “Grace Notes”, but have held off for one reason or another. My initial reactions to the album were a bit on the lukewarm side, and truth be told, there are still parts of the album that I find completely unmemorable. In that regard, Zonoscope feels more uneven then 2008′s In Ghost Colours, did. But Zonoscope‘s high points are so darn good, and the risks that the band takes as far as musical progression and experimentation are so much greater, that I find Zonoscope impossible to dismiss. The band doesn’t exactly shed their “classic” electro-pop sound, but rather, branches out and brings in a host of new influences (Velvet Underground, Talking Heads, even Men At Work). The result is an album that, on tracks like “Need You Now”, “Take Me Over”, “Blink and You’ll Miss a Revolution”, and especially on the penultimate track “Corner of the Sky”, bursts at the seams with an infectious spirit that that is impossible to deny.
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By JOHN EYSTER Saturday, May 21, 2011 – 5:19 a.m. “Doomsday ahead, how do you feel?” The enticing tickler on CNN.com this morning lured me to the VERY interesting iReport, “Judgement Day – May 21, 2011?: The End of the world as we know it!” I encourage you to use this link to view the video and read the over 696 comments.
Classic hip hop at it’s best, check it out above.
Free music today from NEEDTOBREATHE! They recently announced (via Twitter) that they’re giving away their song “The Outsiders” for free – just enter your name, email, and zip code. Seriously good stuff. Check it out!
Read part 1 – Preliminary Discussion.
Read part 2 – Chapter 1 & Introduction.
Read part 3 – Chapter 2
Read part 4 – Chapter 3
Read part 5 – Chapter 4
Read Part 6 – Chapter 5
Read Part 7 – Chapter 6
Christ and Pop Culture writer, Ben Bartlett and guest-writer, Kiel Hauck, two friends who spend their Friday nights playing video and board games in between heated theological, social, and political discussions, come together to hammer out their thoughts about a book that seems to have most other evangelicals shutting down lines of communication, intentionally or not.
Each week, they’ll read one chapter, and trade a few emails discussing the chapter. This week, they discuss Chapter 7: The Good News is Better Than That
Ben Bartlett: “But as Rob whirls us from thought to thought with beautiful affirmations of the life God can offer, my question is this; how are we to know when he makes a mistake, or when he goes to far?”
Kiel,
Rob Bell has a beautiful way with words. Despite a few key disagreements, I very much enjoyed his prose in this week’s chapter, as he described the great joys and beauties of the gospel as he understands it.
Rob Bell is a compassionate man. Even as he discusses theology, he keeps returning in helpful, context-setting ways to stories of people with especially difficult circumstances and challenges. Rob thinks in serious and sincere ways about the problems of the world. He has a clear, strong desire that his words might inspire more loving, compassionate living among his readers. His compassion defines his pastoral nature, as he clearly leads people through listening to them and understanding their hearts. I really love those things about him.
Rob is also a passionate and happy person. His joy overflows in discussing everything from relationships to God to parties to a better world. Rob clearly knows what it is to throw yourself into your life with verve; to enjoy family, friends, and faith. That’s an example we should all aspire to.
Finally, Rob is incredibly creative. His mind takes very simple stories, plays with them, re-imagines them, and then retells them with more force and detail than they had before. He moves seamlessly from analytical interpretation to philosophical rumination and back again. He knows how to take you, step by step, down a pathway you had not seen before. And he does it all with such poetry that you enjoy it the way you would enjoy choir music or modern dance.
But as Rob whirls us from thought to thought with beautiful affirmations of the life God can offer, my question is this; how are we to know when he makes a mistake, or when he goes to far?
Rob asks for a lot of trust; we are to trust his reading of the Greek, his hermeneutics, his analysis, his ruminations on how a loving God ought to act, his ideas about the early church and its use of metaphors. And really, it seems the basis for this trust is the emotion he makes us feel when he says beautiful things about life and about God.
As someone who loves to read, this hits me poorly because I find a lot of people compelling. I was drawn, seemingly against my will, to the powerful minds of Nietzsche and Rand and Ortega y Gasset. I was intrigued by the intricate, pragmatic honesty of Machiavelli and Conrad. I was moved, sometimes to tears, by the richness of Heschel and Malamud and Potok. And yet none of these could fully speak the truth, because none knew the truth. They mostly knew how to exercise a gift they had been given.
I fear that Love Wins began in the heart of a compassionate pastor looking to win back hearts that were hurt or disillusioned, rather than in careful study of the Word of God. He set out to recast the Biblical story in a more compelling and moving and gentle light because he knew Christ to be compelling and moving and gentle.
He did everything in his power to emphasize the beauty of Christ, but in so doing a new structure began to form in his mind. New ideas and ways of reading verses leapt to the fore. He experienced the power of confirmation bias, where we subconsciously tell ourselves stories and overemphasize anything that confirms those stories, while deemphasizing anything that challenges those stories.
I know I’ve done this. For years, I taught strongly Arminian theology, certain that everything about the Bible confirmed God’s protection of our free will and certain that God would be less glorified if he ever messed with that. And then I switched, and became strongly Calvinistic. And now? I’m probably somewhere in between.
Whatever the case, my mind is quite good at understanding and erecting philosophical structures, and it is very difficult for me to overcome my tendency to see what I want to see and deny those things that challenge my understanding. Isn’t it possible this has happened to Rob as well?
I think Rob’s creativity has taken him too far, and the implications of his compassionate musings have led him to support a position that is essentially heretical. He has changed the shape and meaning of the gospel, denied or ignored key elements of the character of God, and altered the central element of the cross from its legal function to take on the role of merely affirming God’s created order.
And though I understand how he got there and have high confidence in his compassionate, pastoral heart, I think he has made a mistake. I hope each person will consider carefully whether the beauty of the things Rob says are worth the danger they pose.
Kiel Hauck: “I think Rob Bell’s message in this chapter is not only beautiful, but vital for so many people in helping them to understand God’s grace. It truly is good news. It’s the kind of good news that makes me rejoice to know such a loving, merciful, caring God.”
Ben,
I guess I want to start by asking who you think we should trust. Whose reading of the Greek, whose hermeneutics, whose analysis, whose ideas about the early church are accurate? Who’s really telling us the truth? By your own admission, your theology on different subjects has changed and evolved during your time as a Christian – mine has as well. As has almost everyone I know, including pastors, teachers, church leaders, and authors. With that in mind, who out there has it all together and has everything figured out? Because if we’re all incapable of grasping and knowing the full truth at all times, then we’re all flawed and in danger of believing and teaching false truths about God.
Here’s what I believe. I believe in the priesthood of all believers. I believe that the Holy Spirit lives inside of us and teaches us and helps us comprehend the things of God. I also believe that each of our lives, our experiences, play a role in shaping our view of things and how God speaks to us. The way God speaks to one person and reveals himself in that person’s life might be completely different than the way he does so in another’s. I believe that we are free to grow and understand God and have disagreements in the meantime because we’re only seeing as in a dim mirror – we haven’t yet seen face-to-face.
In this chapter, Bell beautifully unfolds the story of the prodigal son. We find both sons separated from the father for a number of different reasons, yet both sons have their father’s favor! The things that caused the separation are null and void due to their father’s love, it’s just a matter of them recognizing that instead of living under their own understandings – the younger son that he isn’t worthy and the older son that he can earn his father’s love through his devotion and rightness. Bell says:
Your deepest, darkest sins and your shameful secrets are simply irrelevant when it comes to the counterintuitive, ecstatic announcement of the gospel.
So are your goodness, your rightness, your church attendance, and all the wise, moral, mature decisions you have made and actions you have taken.
Why is it so many people explain the gospel like this: “You’re saved by grace. BUT, you also have to believe the right things. Make sure you have all that stuff sorted out and together before you die. Or before you talk about your faith to anyone else.” Where did that come from? Where do we get that? I have to agree with Bell on this one – the good news is better than that. He says that “Jesus meets and redeems us in all the ways we have it together and in all the ways we don’t, in all the times we proudly display for the world our goodness, greatness, and rightness, and in all of the ways we fall flat on our faces.”
When you say that Rob Bell is “essentially heretical”, you’re saying as much about yourself as you are Bell. In saying that, you’re telling us that you’ve got a grasp on the truth that he doesn’t – you have a correct understanding where he is at fault. The problem is, you’ve admitted to us that you’re capable of being wrong too and that your own understandings of God have evolved and continue to do so. I don’t fault you for this, because you’re in the same boat as the rest of us – a flawed human trying to understand the supreme being of the universe – God, the great I Am.
I have friends who type out the word God like this – “G-d”. I’ve always thought that was beautiful. The idea is that God is so mysterious, so unsearchable, that we can’t even fill in his name. There’s mystery there. Characters in the Bible are regularly mystified by God. Paul erupts into worship in Romans 11, saying “how unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” We serve a patient and understanding God, Ben. I am thankful for this because I know how incapable I am of wrapping my small mind around him.
If at the end of all of this, you still find Rob Bell to be heretical, that’s fine. You are within your right to have that opinion. However, I do encourage you to think hard about the implications of such a statement, because I believe them to be quite large. I think Rob Bell’s message in this chapter is not only beautiful, but vital for so many people in helping them to understand God’s grace. It truly is good news. It’s the kind of good news that makes me rejoice to know such a loving, merciful, caring God. A God who loves us unconditionally, no matter how right or wrong we are.
Ben Bartlett: “Bell’s theology itself is a challenge to what every Christian has been believing and teaching for 2000 years. Doesn’t the gravity of that challenge suggest the weight of proof is on him?”
Kiel,
I think trust is exactly the issue here. For one thing, I trust a pretty plain reading of scripture, which for hundreds of generations of Christians has meant pretty much the same basic thing. For another, I trust the combined understanding of thousands of bible scholars and theologians, who almost universally agree on the basic structure of the gospel and the teaching of Scripture. And finally, I trust the fact that though some elements of my theology have evolved in response to the witness of Scripture, the core elements or pillars of the faith have not.
Let me turn that around to you… what makes Rob Bell and this unique teaching of his so trustworthy?
When I say Rob Bell is heretical (which, basically, just means his teaching is one that is novel to or different from the historic understanding of the faith), it is not a comparison between Rob Bell and me. It’s a comparison between Rob Bell and 99% of Christians across 2000 years of church history.
Now, you’re right to say that for me to challenge Bell’s theology as heretical, that’s a big thing. I do take responsibility for that challenge. But think of it the other way: Bell’s theology itself is a challenge to what every Christian has been believing and teaching for 2000 years. Doesn’t the gravity of that challenge suggest the weight of proof is on him? After all, Scripture is clear that he will be called to account, as all Christian leaders will be, for how he led those under his care.
I think by this point you and I have defined our two sides pretty clearly. Your appreciation for God’s mysteries gives you especially strong compassion for people and helps guide your theology in a certain direction, and my appreciation for God’s clarities gives me an especially strong passion for teaching people to believe Truth exists and that it should be pursued, and that leads me in another direction.
While we’ll continue to disagree on this (and maybe we’ll even discuss it again someday), I’m certainly thankful for the ways you model and teach me about compassion, and I hope I give you appreciation for the power of pursuing truths.
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Each week in Play in Process, Richard Clark shares what he’s been playing and why it matters.
Right off the bat, you can tell that LA Noire is going to disappoint a lot of people. The latest game from the people who gave you Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption takes a decidedly more serious-minded approach to the open world. In LA Noire you aren’t encouraged to cause mayhem – in fact, you are prevented from doing so for the most part. Instead, the focus is very much on people rather than destruction. With the aid of a new technology that gives actual life to the faces of those you meet, the people within the game feel very much like just that – people – rather than lifeless automatons programmed to run away when you barrel toward them in your car.
The obvious downside is that the game doesn’t offer the “sky’s the limit” sandbox gameplay that previous Rockstar games are known for. Most likely, your game time will not be characterized by flipping cars, exploding streets and dead pedestrians. You’ll find yourself driving relatively slowly, stopping at traffic lights, and waiting as pedestrians cross the street. And here’s the kicker: whenever mistakes are made, it will seem like a pretty big deal. You’ll knock down a light-pole, and your partner will freak out. Pedestrian’s faces will betray their shock and horror at the situation. You will feel guilty. At least, that’s if you’re anything like me.
And that’s just the driving.
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