As a pastor-/preacher-in-training, I really enjoy taking
random things and turning them into a way to proclaim the gospel. Whether it’s
an eraser of a pencil: we write our sins, God flips it and erases them; or a
cup of coffee: when it’s internalized, it awakes you to your situation; or a
napkin: they’re typically white (Jesus is pure) and they clean up our messes
(Jesus sure does for us). Regardless of the item, there is usually some way to tie
it to Christ and the gospel. They will all ultimately fall short, but since
Christ wants to be found, He doesn’t make it hard to find Him. I would like to
demonstrate this in some depth through the song “How to Love” by lil Wayne, off
his album Tha Carter IV . The lyrics have been copied below, and bold
type represents the hook (chorus, refrain, whatever) to differentiate it
from the other sections. Also, any profanity has been replaced with a weaker
word within [brackets].
You had a lot of crooks try'na steal your heart
Never really had luck, couldn't never figure out
How to love (how to love)
How to love (how to love)
Mm you had a lot of moments that didn't last forever
Now you in the corner try'na put it together
How to love (how to love)
How to love (how to love)
Mm for a second you were here, now you over there
It's hard not to stare, the way you moving your body
Like you never had a love (had a love)
Never had love (had a love)
When you was just a youngin', your looks were so precious
But now your grown up, so fly it's like a blessing
But you, can't have a man look at you for five seconds
Without you being insecure
You never credit yourself so when you got older
It's seems like you came back ten times over
Now you're sitting here in this [dang] corner
Looking through all your thoughts and looking over your
shoulder
Hook
Mm for a second you were here, now you over there
It's hard not to stare, the way you moving your body
Like you never had a love (had a love)
How to love (how to love)
Ooh, you had a lot of dreams that transform to visions
The fact that you saw the world affected all your
decisions
But it wasn't your fault, wasn't in your intentions
To be the one here talking to me, be the one listening
But I admire your poppin' bottles and dippin'
Just as much as you admire bartending and strippin'
Baby, so don't be mad, nobody else trippin'
You see a lot of crooks and the crooks still crook
Hook
Ooh, see I just want you to know (You to know)
That you deserve the best
You're beautiful, you're beautiful
Yeah, and I want you to know
You're far from the usual, far from the usual
Hook 2x
In order to properly
dissect this song to see the gospel beneath it, we need to look at three
different portions: first, the hook; second, the verses; and third, the bridge.
The hook reads as follows:
You had a lot of crooks try'na steal your heart
Never really had luck, couldn't never figure out
How to love (how to love)
How to love (how to love)
Mm you had a lot of moments that didn't last forever
Now you in the corner try'na put it together
How to love (how to love)
How to love (how to love)
The
first thing to recognize, is that to get the most out of this song, we have to
get past our fears and concede that for the allegory being shared Wayne is
speaking as if he played a character who is God (I know it’s a hard bridge to
cross, but it makes this song mean a whole lot more if we can do this). With
this understanding, the meaning is relatively clear in the hook.
We are seduced by everything in this world.
Nothing is not trying to earn our time and affections. However, none of those
things satisfy in the end. We think they contain love, fulfillment, happiness,
but we are sadly disappointed every time. The things we think will satisfy us
for eternity are fleeting, and leave us with more questions and hurts than we
really want to admit. It seems our whole lives are a search for love.
This leads to the verses. The first verse reads
as follows:
When you was just a youngin', your looks were so precious
But now your grown up, so fly it's like a blessing
But you, can't have a man look at you for five seconds
Without you being insecure
You never credit yourself so when you got older
It's seems like you came back ten times over
Now you're sitting here in this [dang] corner
Looking through all your thoughts and looking over your
shoulder
The first line could
easily be—especially if it was a Christian writing—a reference to Ezekiel
16:6-14 which is itself a parable of Israel’s apostasy from God toward lesser
things. This is what we are too prone to do. We take the gifts that God has
given us and turn them into ways to spurn His glory and grace. The girl in the
song that Wayne is talking about has flirted around with many different men—using
her looks for whatever she can—and now she only finds worth around another man;
they’ve made her insecure, because she finds her worth in them. She knows the
cycle, but she doesn’t know how to escape. She questions her thoughts and she
questions those around her.
The second verse continues the story. It says:
Ooh, you had a lot of dreams that transform to visions
The fact that you saw the world affected all your
decisions
But it wasn't your fault, wasn't in your intentions
To be the one here talking to me, be the one listening
But I admire your poppin' bottles and dippin'
Just as much as you admire bartending and strippin'
Baby, so don't be mad, nobody else trippin'
You see a lot of crooks and the crooks still crook
This girl haad big plans
for her life. We all do. Childhood is where we dream big. “I want to be an astronaut,” “I want to be a
baseball player,” “I want to be a movie star;” all of these are typical dreams
that children have for their life. It was never part of our original plan to be
in the places we end up. (Example: tell me even three years ago that I’d move
to Missouri in two and a half years and I would have laughed in your face.) So
when Wayne says that she never planned on talking to him, it is analogous to
Romans 3:11 in that no one seeks for God.
Maybe this is a stretch, but I’m interpreting
the next two lines, “But I admire your poppin' bottles and dippin' / Just as
much as you admire bartending and strippin'” to mean that he doesn’t admire it
and neither does she in reality. He tells her not to be mad about that
statement, because crooks will stay crooks, but he is different.
The bridge is where I got the idea for this
post. It states:
Ooh, see I just want you to know (You to know)
That you deserve the best
You're beautiful, you're beautiful
Yeah, and I want you to know
You're far from the usual, far from the usual
To me,
this sounds an awful lot like Song of Songs 2:2, where the man says to the
woman, “Like a lily among thorns, so is my darling
among the young women” (HCSB). Wayne is letting her know that
she deserves a lot better, and he is claiming to be able to offer it. He says
that she is far from a typical girl. He says that she makes other girls look
like thorns in comparison.
Jesus says the
same to each one of us. We have pursued other things. We are trapped in a cycle
of looking for love in all the wrong ways. The sinful things we do (cf. “the
way you moving your body”) prove that we are not finding love in the right
place. Jesus ultimately wants us to know that He is the best and if we heed His
offer He will give it to us. For those of us that are His, we deserve the best,
and He will give it to us. We need not ever go back to poppin’ bottles and
strippin’ (drunkenness and sexual sin) or any habitual sin for that matter. Jesus doesn't admire it!
So, hopefully I’ve
made a good case that the gospel can be preached even from something as out
there as a lil Wayne song. What will you use today to share Christ with those
you know?
Soli Deo Gloria
Ooh. That last question. This is good.
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