Today's Devotional
May 4, 2007
Subject: Then Talk About Good Stuff
Colossians 3:8 - "But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth."
Since Don Imus, radio personality, was fired for his racial and profane slur towards the Rutgers women's basketball team, everyone has been assailing the use of the same language by people in the rap music field. Oprah Winfrey is in a public feud with well-known rapper Ludacris and recently Presidential candidate Barack Obama accused the rappers as being "bad" for African-Americans. One gentleman speaking in defense of the hip-hop culture and who runs a group called The Hip Hop Caucus says that there is "more to hip hop culture that the use of the N-word and talking about guns and drugs." My response: "If there is more, then why don't they talk about it?"
The truth of the matter is that most anyone who decries the ills of hip hop music today are probably right. The movement in hip hop has deteriorated massively since it's inception. It has moved from progressive efforts in the late 80's and early 90's where the rappers joined together to talk about stopping gang violence, to a point now where gang violence and membership is openly promoted in large by the rap community. There are lots of very negative things coming out of this music today and anyone who would see it as a positive force has missed the well-known scripture above.
The scripture above doesn't make allowances for you to be able to say, "I'm just keeping it real" an oft-used excuse by those in the hip-hop community. It says put these things off "now."
We would be well-served in all of our society if everyone decided that while there is much negative that we could utter and we could use terrible terms and words to describe people and events, we should rather choose to talk about good. We should always ask that the words of our mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in His sight. Then we would talk about good stuff.
