On the way home from work today I turned on the radio to see if anything thing new was on. I try to stay up to date on all the new music thats on the local radio stations so that I can understand the culture that my students are coming from. Rest assured that T-Pain wouldn’t even be on my radar if it wasn’t for this type of cultural study.
I don’t know what song was on but I did notice the lyrics. It was a rap song and part of the song said, “Oh my gosh”. Now the reason this caught my attention was because I am fairly sure that I have heard the song before and it ended with, “Oh my god” instead. Why is this important? It really show how hypocritical we are.
How does it show us to be hypocrites? Let me explain. At some point along the line while this song was being recorded someone had to have mentioned that they needed two versions. One version that said, “Oh my god” and a second version that said, “Oh my gosh”. Why may you ask did they make two versions? Someone was going to get offended. They were going to hear the song and say, “I can’t believe that song says ‘Oh my god’.” So in hopes that they can get all mainstream radio stations to play the song from Detroit down to the Bible belt they decided to make two versions. Now understand that this song isn’t the first or last to do this. Many songs change a word or two out of the lyrics so that they can get more play time on the radio in different regions of the country. They do it to help boost sales and to reach a larger audience.
Now for the funny part. There are people that will get so offended over the use of the phrase “Oh my god” in a song (or in other instances a curse word being used in a song) but will be fine with the content of the song. The sad part about this is that the content is usually just as bad or worse than the use of the word or phrase that has to be changed in order to market the song in a profitable way. I think we all may be missing the point here. Why are we so concerned about the use of phrases or words and seemingly O.K. with the content when the meaning behind it is so bad? I think it comes down to the fact that we are already so used to doing this in our lives.
Heres an every day example (that if I admit it I need a lot of work on). If you say the word “freaking” instead of f******, how is that better? If you call someone an idiot instead of an a******, how is that different? Its not! The words are different, but the meaning behind it is still the same. I think we may be missing the big picture. Instead of trying to cover up our motivation with “better” words or just flat out saying what we think shouldn’t we ask the Holy Spirit to continually work on our hearts? I think yes.
If you are a Christian let us pray together that the Holy Spirit would do a continual work in our lives to change our hearts and minds to be more like His. Let our hope and prayer be that we would see people like God seems them.
If your not a Christian I pray that God grabs ahold of you and changes your life. If you have Christians around you that use “Christian curse words” in place of the words you already use, point this out to them. They need to hear it from you! If they get mad don’t worry about it. God is using you to convict them and they don’t like it.
Pastor Mike Moore 