Lent: People Can Change

Taylor Swift is a remarkably talented musical prodigy. Be all appearances she is also humble and approachable. Not a Diva. Her new song Mean, with her playing the banjo, is a catchy pop song. Moreover, the message of defending those on the outs--particularly youth--is sweet and strong. That song give kids one thing they need more than anything...hope. She handled that Kanye West public dis' at the MTV Music Awards about as gracefully in real time as imaginable. Talk about a bully.  

But, believe it or not, the song has a dark side and it is not just the negative antagonists. The lyrics themselves have an underlying message of some people just won't change. And that is true. Yet, only God knows if people will. Unless Taylor is omniscient, some things are better left up to God to project upon. I know that there are probably scores of Christian parents who have let this song be downloaded onto their childrens' mobile listening device thinking, "A great song with a great message."        

It is one thing to assess a person's character at present...a liar, and pathetic...to use a couple of words that Taylor does in her song. Even then, we should be exceedingly careful to do so. Few of us are truly free of such sentiments. It is much more common for all of us to look down upon someone else to feel better about ourselves. At least internally where the mind, heart, and soul converge. Even "loser" kids look down on a kid worse off than they socially. That is why lepers were such a target in Jesus' day. People presumed that God had cursed them for some grievous sin. And the crowd held them up as worse than they, not just physically but morally. Kind of like smokers these days...the one group we can all pick on with no social recrimination.  

The song errs more so in its prophecy that the bully in the future will be a drunk mean-spirited soul still talking trash from the trash pile (for when one talks trash, that it where one sits for a ready supply), while who he picked on, now has her name in lights. This is where the song darkens severely. Every saint, it is said, has a past. And every sinner, has a future. The Apostle Paul, before being converted, was a killer of Christians. In a replaying of the biblical story of King Saul and David (for Saul of Tarsus too was from the line of Benjamin), Saul persecuted Christians, going from town to town and dragging them to prison. A real bad dude, more than just mean. A murderer. Even after being literally or figuratively knocked off his high horse on the way to Damascus, Believers retained a residual fear of him that lasted a long time.

The Bible tellingly starts to refer to him as Paul in Acts. Although not a name change officially--Paul was his Greek name from birth--the emphasis reflects a generosity and grace of Paul becoming and being the bringer of Good News to the Gentile, Non-Jewish, world. Paul himself would have called himself a "Liar, and a Cheater, and a Killer, and all I was Mean." But I am not what I was.

People can change because Christ changes people.

 “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me” (1 Cor 15:10, RSV).