Last night I was grading Christian Doctrine papers with the MTV Video Music Awards (VMA’s) on in the background. Talk about an event made for the DVR. I must have cut half the time off of my viewing by fast forwarding through all of those 8-minute commercial breaks. Unfortunately, I wasn’t paying full attention and accidentally caught the Jersey Shore folks doing their thing. I had managed to completely avoid that train wreck up until that point. At least it was a short scene. I think I only lost 80 dozen brain cells.
Truth be told, if my wife had not been on call there is no way I would have watched the VMA’s in their entirety. She would have mocked me into submission and shame 30-seconds in. She’s just a better person than I. I’m just a sucker for the pop culture Cliff’s Notes that the event serves as. A lot of what I saw was just confirmation of stuff I already assumed (Eminem is a crazy genius, Justin Bieber is totally overrated, Usher can dance, MTV has no moral compass, as long as people getting smacked in the face is funny the Jackass crew is going to keep printing money), but there were some revelations (Lady Gaga can really sing, MTV still shows music videos).
The other thing about the night that didn’t surprise me? Pop music artists give awful speeches. No stunner there. The epitome came when Lady Gaga won her third (I think) award and ran out of words. As she was getting off the stage she just went with what popped into her head.
“God bless pop music, and God bless the VMA’s”.
Interesting.
I stopped grading for a hot minute, and started thinking about what would happen if God heard and responded to that statement. What would that look like? The Pat Robertsonian school of theology would postulate that there could be no redemption in the night. God’s only recourse would be to ignore the proceedings or open up a hole in the ground and swallow the whole thing up.
I really wanted to hit the Twitter with a GaGa blast, but I didn’t. Apparently at the ripe age of 30 I’ve learned some self-restraint. Somebody get me a cookie.
Then the most amazing thing happened…Taylor Swift took the stage.
I’ve never thought much of Swift. A lot of that has to do with the fact that I really don’t care for Carrie Underwood, and I get the two of them confused all of the time.
But last night Taylor Swift differentiated herself. Not just from Carrie Underwood but from pretty much all of us that have a hard time forgiving people She debuted a song that I consider the MTV version of forgiving your neighbor 70×7 times. After what happened last year she could have big timed Kanye and nobody would have thought any less of her. She could have clowned him. She could have done any number of things. But in the end, she forgave him. She complimented him. She encouraged him. She told the world to let that cat off the hook.
And she did it in an emotionally vulnerable and musically powerful way.
I’m convinced that God heard Lady Gaga and answered her prayer. If for only five minutes, Swift redeemed the VMA’s. God found a way to bless both pop music and the VMA’s.
It was pretty incredible.
And that Linkin Park follow up wasn’t a shabby encore of depth and spiritual presence, if I do say so myself.
Renew and Restore
