As the topic of gay rights has reached a boiling point and the supreme court overturning DOMA the country has seen a surge of support for the LGBT community. A cultural acceptance of the LGBT community has begun to settle in and our music shows it. I have always been fascinated with how the truest views of a culture are seen through the lens of its music and its comedy. Both are forms of telling the current cultural story.
This is why I think that all music can, no matter who produces it, have bits of truth in the words. “Same Love” by Macklemore is no different. In fact one of the lines that I hear quoted most often is the the same line that bears the most truth. These lines are the lines that start off the chorus and say,
And I can’t change
Even if I tried
Even if I wanted to
And I can’t change
Even if I tried
Even if I wanted to
I believe these lines resonate with so many people, even those that aren’t part of the LGBT community, because of the truth found within them. We all do things, or have done things, that we feel that need to be changed or fixed. We might have been told to fix these “things” by our parents, religious leaders or someone else we looked up too. However after trying everything we could think of we found that we, as the song says, couldn’t change. We resigned ourselves to what we believe to be the truth of our existence. We started believing that this is just the way things are. This is who we are.
I think many would be surprised to read that the Bible agrees with that conclusion, you can’t change. In fact the Bible states that,
…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,…
However that is not the end of the story. Though we have all sinned (i.e. broken God’s law) and fallen short of the glory of God (i.e. not been able to live up to His standards) that does not mean we can simply resign ourselves to our sinful conditions. God has provided a way out of our sin and back to Him in the way of Jesus. He knew that we would be unable to live up to His standards. He knew that we would need Him, but yet we would fight that very life saving idea. So He gave us rules that our rebellious hearts would not keep and in doing so pointed us to Himself. Our need for Him is great.
We are unable to save ourselves and like wise unable to change ourselves. We, by great discipline and over time, can alter how we do certain things. However a great and lasting change of the heart and nature can only be brought by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5; 1 Corinthians 5:7; Colossians 3:10).
So Macklemore is correct when he writes that “I can’t change, Even if I tried, Even if I wanted to” however his conclusion of accepting that ends in a place or rebellion instead of repentance. It might sound arrogant to assert that one must line up their views to the Bible instead of lining up the Bibles view with ours but we don’t get to make the rules. We can start making the rules when we create the universe and all the life contained within it.
Until then we are left two options. We can admit that we can’t change and run to the one that can change us. Or we can sit in our sin and admit that we can’t change and deal with the eternal reactions to that.
Pastor Mike Moore 