Mainstreaming blasphemy
Posted: July 26, 2008
1:00 am Eastern
© 2008
"Then Jesus said, 'Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do'" (Luke 12:34).
If you have been watching television recently, you may have seen a commercial for a movie titled, "Hamlet 2," which includes the song, "Rock Me, Sexy Jesus."
Here is an excerpt:
Rock me, rock me, rock me sexy Jesus
He died for our sins, you gotta believe us
Rock me, rock me, rock me sexy Jesus
all night long.
In the movie, written and directed by gay filmmaker Andrew Fleming, a high school teacher writes a sequel to Shakespeare's drama, in which Jesus brings Hamlet back to life to perform in musicals.
I watched a video of the song and found it to be shocking. And why wouldn't I? This is, after all, my Savior and Lord who is being smeared and slandered. But then, I'm a Christian – and my feelings don't matter to the "mainstream."
There's more. Also this summer, a play titled "Jerry Springer – The Opera in Concert" has played in several cities. TFP.org reported that, in the play, an effeminate Jesus who wears a diaper states: "Actually, I am a bit gay." Eve is reportedly depicted as having sexual dalliances with Jesus.
(Column continues below)
It goes on and on. Earlier this year, a short video titled "Modern Day Jesus" portrayed Jesus as the sex-starved roommate of Mary Magdalene. On "South Park," Jesus was depicted as a member of "Imagination Land." On A&E's documentary "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," filmmaker James Cameron claimed evidence shows that Jesus married and had a family. In April, director Paul Verhoeven cast aspersions on the virgin birth of Christ, writing that Jesus was "probably the son of Mary and a Roman soldier who raped her during the Jewish uprising in Galilee," according to the Hollywood Reporter.
On the radio, we've gotten Kid Rock's "Rock N Roll Jesus" and Hayes Carll's "She Left Me for Jesus," which further denigrate the name of Christ.
You could say, "Hey, Falwell, if you don't like 'Rock N Roll Jesus,' don't listen to it." OK, that's fine. The problem is – and this falls into my mainstreaming-of-blasphemy proposition – ESPN has been promoting the song between innings of baseball broadcasts. It doesn't seem to matter that Christians might be offended by the song.
It's this "Who cares?" attitude regarding depictions of Jesus that leads me to fear that our nation has lost any clear notion of who Jesus is. And as a result of this growing national ignorance, we are witnessing this mounting wave of antagonism and ridicule regarding our Savior.
Compounding the problem is our present age of "diversity," which seems to want to protect every form of expression except those that advance the cause of Jesus Christ.
Further, at the same time Jesus is being increasingly mocked in the "mainstream," His name is progressively more unwelcome in the public square. Just this week a federal court of appeals in Virginia upheld a lower court ruling sustaining the right of the Fredericksburg City Council to bar prayers mentioning Jesus' name.
In our nation, the "mainstream" apparently wants the right to: 1) poke fun at and ridicule Jesus, no matter how offensive it is to Christians and 2) demolish our nation's historic public veneration of Christ and His Ten Commandments. No wonder we are experiencing moral collapse.
The fact remains that even amid this growing hostility toward Jesus Christ, He reaches out in perfect love, wanting to embrace and save those who despise Him – just as He did with Paul (Saul), the great persecutor of Christians in his day.
I'll close with a verse of encouragement from 1 Peter 4:16: "Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in this matter." Even as the world continues to despise Jesus and those who love Him, we can never forget that He calls us to be intrepid and honorable representatives of Him so that people will see Christ in us.
We must continue to proclaim that Jesus is "the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:16)!
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