So I’m a big fan of the band Gungor. They’re lyrics are prophetic and their music is so creative it gets in your bones. I had heard this song a while back, and it has grown on me. Now I know that this is edgy, and I’ve seen the reviews and heard the pushback from it’s message. I know the call of holiness that God has on His people’s lives. I’ve heard (and preached) those sermons. And I get that. But…
It might be a good idea to think about why the video exists in the first place. In their book, UNChristian, Gabe Lyons and David Kinnaman make the point that Christians are seen by outsiders primarily as political and judgmental (specifically to people with same-sex attraction). And if you were to just reverse-engineer this song, you’d probably find relationships that the creeators had with people who had been burned by these very things.
Again, I get that my generation is reacting against extremes that the news showed them often, and that we should be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.But there is a reason the song ends with the refrain, “So please just stop the hating.” But a deeper truth here, one that I think, Gungor is tapping into, is that God is bigger than our labels or agendas. He transcends our politics and skin color. And that at the core this God is love.
One of the things that disturbed me about the video at first was that God seemed to be pretty superficial. Children who had plates of vegetables saw them magically transformed into plates of candy. Traffic was avoided by turning anger into pogo sticks, smokestacks were transformed into rainbows. It seems like it was portraying God as kind of a magic genie in the sky who granted wishes. A kind of divine Skittles commercial. But then I realized what I think they were trying to do.
I don’t think that’s Gungor’s view of God. I think they, like the psalmist before them, were bumping into the lyrical impossibility of describing how good God is. Sometimes the psalms talk about things like mountains clapping, or rivers singing. Not because they used to do those things, but because how do you put words to the basic goodness of God. All that’s left when we honestly try is hyperbole. Gungor is trying to remind us of something that we should already know. That God’s love is Epic.Because God himself is to big to be reduced to a single image. He can’t be boxed and peddled or sold. He cannot be claimed by any one institution, or political party. And if those things bother us, maybe we should reconsider again how good God is. Because in the words of Paul:
“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Because God loves everyone.
Even Pat Robertson.
(Special thanks to Matt Dabbs for this video).
