Back in 2008, my husband introduced me to a band from Warner Robins, GA called Rehab. I started listening to them while Drew was in boot camp, and later A school. Their music was somehow soothing, though it is a mix of hip-hop, rock, and reggae among others. It was soothing to know that someone else was out there listening to the same things I was. As time went on, I happened upon what was to become my favorite of the Rehab songs.
"You know, they say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned
So vengeful and mother earth has been done wrong
And I think she's sick
Yo, she's pukin up lava
Her nerves tremble along fault lines ready to drop an entire city of filth
that's been forced upon her
We built these towers of Babel and feel remorse for nada
The momma divorce the father
The children are droppin blotter
The rich get richer, poverty's hot under the collar
Takin prayer outta schools and we're tryin to raise scholars
Creationism vs. the theory of evolution
Air, water, land, mind, body and soul pollution
Kids steppin on land mines from wars we're all losin
We're chasin false idols, erasing from our bibles the golden rule
the youth are becoming more suicidal
Who teaches them, you and I do
No wonder they want to fight you
Raised by hypocrites, you feel lied to.
Graffiti the land with skyscrapers
Graffiti the sky with airplanes and satellites
Graffiti the minds of children with your man-made laws
Graffiti the world, I saw the writing on the wall
We've got ABC, NBC, MTV, TNT, the BBC, DVD, VHS, DSL, A and E, XTC, mp3, FCC, THC, NRA, GOP??.. ADD
The fight for free speech, lack of responsibility
Thieves in positions of power
Internet pornography
Guns in the home for fear that the next knock at the door could be death
The terrorists are in the White House and oversees
Racists, separatists, vicious militias
The Buddhists, the Hindus, the Muslims, the Christians
Could it be our biggest barrier is language
Or is oil that important that one would inflict anguish
So cars can deplete the ozone on highways
That stretch across the land where Indians once raised families
We're in denial, the world is afraid
And you say there's no more slaves
Graffiti the land with skyscrapers
Graffiti the sky with airplanes and satellites
Graffiti the minds of children with your man-made laws
Graffiti the world, I saw the writing on the wall
We're addicted to planes, trains and automobiles
We're addicted to addiction
We dig livin in fiction
For money, power, respect, the Army's got to go kill
They're under contract so let the blood spill
Sorta morbid ain't it this picture that I just painted
It's an epiphany I had
I realized just how tainted our thinking really is
While in New York when I saw a teenager being arrested for taggin a fuckin wall.
Graffiti the land with skyscrapers
Graffiti the sky with airplanes and satellites
Graffiti the minds of children with your man-made laws
Graffiti the world, I saw the writing on the wall"
I believe this song pretty much speaks for itself... It talks about many things that should bother us about today's world. I listen to this song, and sometimes, even though I like it, I feel like crying because of everything we've done to the world around us, people and all. True to the song, we have created a "filth" within our cities, starting with our homes and churches. We have let it spread to the point that I would sort of understand if God just opened the Earth up like He did with Moses' family and drop the cities into it one by one. Gone. In a flash of a moment that it took for them to sink to Hell. In my humble opinion, this is one of the most spiritually charged "secular" songs out there.
For those who do not remember what the Tower of Babel was all about: "'Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.' But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The Lord said, 'If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.'" How ironic, aye? A group of people who all had the same language suddenly decided to build a city including a tower which would give them fame / fortune etc. as opposed to building it that God might obtain the fame. But humans are such silly things. You see, we say that we're going to do something, but then we add in a little cover-story in order to try to cover for the bad part of what they're doing. These people made a cover story like that. It went something like this: "Hey, let's build a tower for our own glory and fame and purpose [so that we might not be seperated ever again in the history of foreverness and we'll keep the money and the glory we get from others for it too]!!" Just one problem. God sees through cover stories. So He scrambled the languages and after they'd all left and died, He eventually gave a guy named Alfred Butts the idea to take pieces of wood and cut letters into them and now we have a game called Scrabble that we might all continue to enjoy the joke. Ok, so some of that history might be a bit off, but I'm sure it got some laughs. In today's world, we have built our own Tower(s) of Babel. We have made names for ourselves, rather than giving everything we are to the God we claim to love.
I want everyone to look around themselves for a moment. Look around. See what I see?
- I see tree huggers getting a lot of flak for trying to be good stewards of the world God gave us. Granted some of them can be a bit too overzealous with that whole vegetarian thing, but seriously...
- I see that we as a nation no longer consider marriage to be a sacred thing. That's what pre-nups are for... because people apparently started planning "un-holy" matrimonies.
- I see that kids in daycare are cussing.
- I see a selfish people.
- I see those who cannot understand the importance of prayer vs. those who are too busy arguing to show them.
- I see religious idiots who are spending more time arguing the points of right vs. wrong rather than just being the church and accepting others as is, without judgment.
- I see battles - and the children fighting to survive them for the simple reason that they are stronger than the adults but no one's willing to stand and recognize unless they just sniped their 50th victim.
- I see frienemies.
- I see a people unwilling to admit who their god(s) really are.
- I see bloody and/or dead teenagers.
- I see stubborn parents, and the children who will never take their words of love again.
- I see irresponsibility at it's most inhumane.
I leave you with these thoughts in the hope that you find something to do with them. Because in all of this pain and sorrow, and through all this sweat and these tears, I see a God who can save us all, but first, we must save ourselves for Him... meet Him halfway down the road to redemption.
No comments:
Post a Comment