We Are Failing Our Children!
Football season is upon us! A few days ago, we drove two hours to watch my son's final football scrimmage before the high school season begins. It was a good contest between two relatively even schools. On my son's side, a rural school with twenty players, half of whom play "ironman" football—on the opposing side, a small thirty-man squad from a Catholic school that shares facilities with a large AAA high school. As they warmed up, the PA system blared motivational music meant to get the teams and fans in the football mood. Songs like "White Sand" and "B.B.O." by Migos blared from the end zone.
"I walk it like I talk it..." sorry folks, but that's about all I can print of the lyrics from Migos' third rap tune titled "Walk It, Talk It" they played during warm-ups. The rest of the lyrics objectivize women, celebrate drugs and gang violence, and use racial epithets that should be stricken from the English language. I would tell you to check the lyrics out for yourself if you don't believe me, but I don't really want to be the one exposing you if you've never heard it.
Seriously, though, we are failing our children. My wife and I were appalled that a Catholic school would play music at an official school function that praised all the wrong things. It wasn't just these three songs either. Every song they played had more words blanked or bleeped than spoken. Every song objectivized women as sexual toys to be used and abused by a "powerful" man. Every song praised gang violence and celebrated using and dealing drugs. Every song was racially and sexually offensive – and they played them at a high school football game!
I don't need to find a single Bible verse to help with this one. Let me just reference all 57 books from cover to cover instead. Come to think of it, I would be hard pressed to find any responsible adult across Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Atheism, Communism, or Cannibalism who would agree playing this type of music at a school function is acceptable.
But I'll still give you one: Luke 17:2.
"It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble." (NIV)
Folks, if you think anything about Migos' music is beneficial to the future of these United States, regardless of whether you are black, white, or any other color skin, you are sadly mistaken. Come on, folks. I mean, I can't even spell out in this blog what "B.B.O." stands for.... There is zero redeeming quality to music that teaches our young men to abuse women or praises the sins of excess any more than Migos—and the athletic department of a Catholic high school played it at a high school football game! Think about the message that sends—and we wonder why the Catholic church is in such an uproar over priest misconduct?
My posts focus on love, love overcoming hate, and God's provision being superior in every case to anything hate can bring. So even in my own anger, righteous or not, I have to stop and pray that God himself would intercede where these adults have failed their children. Pray that God's love would overcome their desire to "be relevant" to this generation and they become responsible to this generation instead. A child from a broken home or an at-risk neighborhood doesn't need us to be "relevant" to his surroundings. He needs us to be the light on a hill. He needs us to be the hand reaching down to help him out of his quagmire. He needs us to be Christ in this world of sin and hate. Let us, therefore, "Pray without ceasing" (1 Thes 5:16) for our children—and be the adults their whole generation needs us to be.
– Mark Klages is an influential contributor, a former US Marine and a lifelong teacher who focuses on applying a Christian worldview to everyday events. Mark blogs at https://maklagesl3.wixsite.com/website under the title "God Provides where Hate Divides," with a heart to heal social, political, relational, and intellectual wounds through God's divine love and grace. Mark can also be found on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-klages-04b42511/.