Prophetic Questions

Is America honest, or do we bask in sin?

-Kendrick Lamar, XXX

How can you say I am not defiled, 

I have not gone after the Baals?

-Jeremiah 2: 23

Kendrick Lamar won a Pulitzer Prize for his latest album Damn, specifically because he asks some very hard questions. I have not had much reason to invest in much hip hop music lately, it all seems like weird club kids run amok or Kanye stroking his own ego, but an album winning a Pulitzer for the first time got me curious. Back in the day, as they say, the kind of rap music that got my attention was politically conscious and a little bit angry.  Whether it was the Black Power themes of Public Enemy or the Straight Outta Compton rage of NWA, if I was going to listen to a form of music that so emphasizes the spoken word, I wanted it to say something. One of my favorite songs of all time is a proto-rap song by Gil Scott Heron called The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, which laments the era of futility in America in the late 1970s.  A lot of hip hop ends up being very moment-specific, at it's best it uses a broadside slap to the head of our collective consciousness, and Kendrick Lamar has given us that, in a form that is both evolutionary and rooted.

What has dawned on me as I have listened to the album driving about in my car is that the roots of what Lamar is doing are deeper than the musical form.  He is doing something prophetic, he is asking questions, about our culture, about our shared humanity.  He creates word pictures of both the holy and the profane (and sometimes very profane) parts of our lives.  It is street language and also poetry at the same time, there is a little bit of old-time gospel preaching and a little bit of Sir Mix-a-lot vulgarity, and if you're sensitive to the vulgarity you might be tempted to write off what Kendrick has done and not hear the prophetic questions he's asking and the lament that re-occurs throughout: "Ain't nobody prayin for me."

The questions can be brutal, they dredge up the racial muck that we are trying so very hard to deny, they dredge up the images of poverty and the struggles of kids growing up without adequate parenting, they dredge up our substance and sex addicted culture. But the brutality and uncomfortable nature of the questions is what shows me the roots of what Lamar is up to: he's being prophetic, and yes, I do mean like Jeremiah and Ezekiel in the Bible, and no, that is not sacrilege.  There have been times when hip hop has bordered on this type of behavior before, but a lot of the time there was a certain insincerity about it, or maybe too much of a specific worldly agenda.  I'm dating myself, but my example is Public Enemy, Chuck D could certainly spit the questions and raise the temperature, but he was ultimately too enthralled by Louis Farakhan and the failed ideology of the Nation of Islam.  Kendrick is just asking questions, not preaching answers, because the answers are much more self-evident than we want to admit they are.

Consider Jeremiah's question, it's not asking for input, it is stating fact. They are defiled and they have gone after false gods.  That was a fact, but it was an uncomfortable fact that people did not like Jeremiah very much for bringing up. Kendrick's question: "Is America honest?" No it is not, we are lying to ourselves about a great many things. "Do we bask in sin?" Absolutely, try to tell me that we don't with a straight face, I dare you. That's how prophets work: they tell you what you already know to be true, but would rather not face.

There is only one prescription given by a Prophet: turn away from the Baals (false gods and idols) and toward the One True God. And the thing is, you don't necessarily have to be a religious type to do this. Jesus sets a path that can and should bind all of us, whether we have faith or not.  We are connected to one another; a truth that you can find in all the religions and in secular humanism as well.  Our collective existence is dependent on our ability to love (or at least care for if you prefer) one another.  Faith should help this, as we recognize a spiritual connection between ourselves, God and one another that mirrors the example of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Faith in a Creator also allows us to name the relationship we have with other humans as a blood relation, kinship as Children of God, Brothers and Sisters in Christ, and makes some sense out of otherwise chaotic and meaningless things.

In our highest ideals this nation has codified this connection into a system of laws and a democratic process. It doesn't always work, it sometimes gets messy and frustrating, but if we keep asking questions and keep turning away from our idols and towards the grace of what we can be at our best, we have reason for hope.