Legion (The American Exorcism): a rap

About a month ago, I wrote a blog post about a phenomenon I’m witnessing among American evangelicals that seems like a massive reenactment of Jesus’ exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac in which he casts a bunch of demons from a man into a herd of pigs who storm off a cliff and drown. As the tinfoil hat types among us get more and more obviously ridiculous and start racing towards a cliff, many of us are turning back in disgust as Jesus exorcises our demons. So this song is the rap version of that blog post, basically mixing imagery from Mark 5 with the parable of talents.

It names an attitude problem that I see in which people hide their selfishness behind so-called “family values” and resemble the third servant from the parable of the talents who would rather live a safe, comfortable life than live an adventure of imaginative entrepreneurship by listening to and obeying the Holy Spirit (I’m not accusing anyone in particular of doing this; if it convicts you, then let it; if the shoe doesn’t fit; then don’t wear it). Families are important; I love my wife and boys very much and I would give everything to defend them from harm. But unless we start to “seek the kingdom of God first” (Matthew 6:33) before family, career, country, sports, hobbies (and all the other allegiances to which we pledge), then we won’t be able to have a paradigm shift as a society in how we take care of each other. This is not about defending either political party; this is about getting past the selfish attitude that outsourced our responsibility for each other to government agencies and experts in the first place.

I personally think some safety nets require national coordination; others need to be shifted to a grassroots, personal approach. If we get our tax cuts on the backs of the poor and we don’t make new safety nets to replace the ones that get cut down, I’ll guarantee you that God will sic an Assyria or a Babylon on us just like He did to Israel back in the day (that is, if we aren’t ourselves the Babylon from Revelation, and in that case, you can read about our destiny in that book). Think about this verse and be convicted by it: “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him” (John 1:9). It’s as true today as it was in 1st century Palestine; we crucify our savior every day.