Just yesterday, news broke that billionaire rapper Shawn Corey Carter (stage name Jay-Z) is credibly accused (that's the phrase we're all using now, correct?) in a civil lawsuit of raping a 13-year-old girl back in 2000 with his friend and fellow pervert, the recently indicted Sean "Diddy" Combs.
I'm thankful for a judicial system predicated upon the presumption of innocence. Popularly, however, there's plenty of reason to suspect a man like Jay-Z, who has spent his entire professional life getting filthy rich by objectifying and exploiting the bodies of young girls.
Could it be that his innocent victim has been forced to watch him amass wealth and be worshipped by our sick culture for the last 24 years? As he rubs elbows with Barack Obama one night, and then hit men of the hip-hop mob the next, average Americans continue to pour literal billions into his bank account.
Ditto all this for Diddy. It's sick.
That's what makes it so despicable to me to watch the same media and pop culture spokesmen who turn a blind eye to all that be the same ones posting alerts to social media about how Pete Hegseth's Christian tattoo might mean something ominous for our country.
I didn't know whether to laugh or chuck my phone through the window when I scrolled down from the latest Hegseth headline a couple days ago to see a glowing article about actress Megan Fox being pregnant with her fourth child.
Googled a billion times a year, ogled twice as much, Fox is an A-lister that, because of her penchant for publicly disrobing in order to display her latest plastic surgery, regularly gets fawning press. Never mind the fact that she's willfully ruined the lives of three children. Dressing her sons as girls from a very young age, she has confused them, celebrated their warped misunderstanding of sexuality, and then used them as props for her own camera addiction.
Debauchery at work, destroying the innocence of children at home. A sane society would be repulsed, and shove cameras in her face only to shame the abuse she has inflicted on the innocent. Instead, watch how the interviewers treat her the next time she walks the red carpet.
We are far from sane.
Maybe it's because I'm getting old and it's just now dawning on me, or maybe it really is getting worse than it used to be, but I find myself utterly repulsed by America's idolatrous worship of the perversion and stupidity of the entertainment world.
I know I'm fighting a losing battle. I know none of this is going to change -- unless, of course, it gets worse. But if that sounds defeatist, let me assure you, it's not.
As a Christian, I know that the world is in rebellion to God's will and the spirit of conformity seduces and captures the vast majority of people. That's why Jesus called it the "wide path." But I also know that I have the distinct privilege of offering to those walking such a destructive road a better way. A safer way. A more joyful, fulfilling, redemptive, forgiving, and hopeful way.
You can worship youth, but it doesn't last.
You can lust after bodies, but they'll age and deteriorate.
You can envy wealth and fame, but they will depreciate and fade.
You can look up to rappers, but then you'll find out they raped kids for kicks.
What a tragic and futile existence. In contrast, the Apostle Paul famously wrote to Christians, "You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love."
Surely, there can be no greater service we can render unto our fellow man than trying to help lead them away from such misery and into the arms of a Savior who never fades, never flees, and never fails.
