Tuesday, September 18, 2012

The Same Old Songs Crackling into the Top 40

Ecclesiastes 7:5-6

5 It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise
than to hear the song of fools.
6 For as the crackling of thorns under a pot,
so is the laughter of the fools; this also is vanity.


The songs of fools are frequently the most popular.  The crackling sound of a campfire on a crisp autumn evening is soothing and serene.  But the sound is produced by flame.  Those thorns, good for nothing other than kindling, burn with brilliance and we are prone to forget their end is ashes. 

Because it is better for us to be rebuked, the airwaves are full of people making profit off telling you what your itching ears would rather hear.  Sweet nothings in your ear are preferable to statements that require reformation and repentance as a response.

Pop culture is the product of popular position.  Being rebuffed is never popular.

Fools laugh and make light of that which was intended to anchor us down.  The subjects of popular culture increasingly reflect a desire to make light that which is heavy and requires strength to carry.  No responsibility or backbone are any longer required to engage in the weigthier things of life such as sex, salvation, children, money, and marriage.  We have taken those things which ought to have required effort to uphold and made them silly, sentimental fluffy puffs that can be taken so lightly as to barely lift a finger to participate.  Yeah, there's an app for that.

It is better to have a wise man tell you that you're wrong than to have a fool sing to you the merits of your own depravity.  This is true. 

My children, listen to wise men and receive their counsel.  Beware of being wooed and sold the substance of your sinfulness being sung back to you.  When the songwriter is preaching to the choir of our shared shallowness you can be assured that nothing good will ever come of it.  Nothing.  My children, do not fall victim to the vanity of self-help and self-love so often solicited to you.  There is no solace in self, only in the Son.

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