Secular Seduction

by Paula Neal Mooney



I see you winding and grinding up on the floor

I know you see me looking at you when you already know

I want to love you, love you, you already know

I want to love you, love you, you already know



Akon's lovely and whining and beautiful and nasally voice just filled my minivan as soon as I turned on the ignition. Yeah, I grooved along for nanoseconds to the hypnotic beat, glancing to read the screen display of "Wanna Love You" by Akon - featuring Snoop Dogg.

Of course I just learned that this is the clean version of the song. The dirty version, probably played on those XL (which my husband taught me stands for "explicit" not "extra large") XM Stations I usually breeze right past these days, admits that Akon's euphemism for "love" is a lot farther away from the "agape" type of love definition.

Too early in the morning for this sinful stuff, I thought, flipping back to my trusty The Spirit channel on XM 33.

Remember me, how You set me free?

I just don't want to go back

Things of the past I no longer see...

I just don't want to go back



Ah...home again. I sang along to Just Dont Want to Go Backby First Creation, thinking how apropos those lyrics were in that situation.

I know the world of which Akon sings. Been there, done that. When will guys like him realize that real love is fighting to get your woman admitted to the hospital after she hasn't eaten for four days due to a peritonsillar abscess, cutting thru blistering Lake Michigan-chilled winds at 4 in the morning to get her medicine, then sleeping aside her in her hospital bed when the HMO battle is won like my Chris did years ago?

But again, I digress. I really want to write about the battle for our souls thru music. When I was growing up and heard that some kids were disallowed from listening to "secular" music because they lived with preachers and such, I thought to myself: Are they nuts?

I'd already begun to ingest a steady diet of the rude boy himself, The Apostle Formerly and Currently Known as Prince.

I stared at this album cover for days on end, learning every lyric, every moan, every nuance of his being, as did many kids of my generation.

Heck, I could've penned the recent study myself that shows that children who listen to raunchy lyrics are more likely to have sex earlier.

And while people are busy studying and pointing fingers at the kids, we might as well focus on that thumb pointing back at us.

The battle doesn't magically end when we turn 30. Of course I hear the enticing beat and crooning. Like when a cute married guy told me he liked Floetry. All summer long I changed the station whenever their song came on:

All you gotta do is say yes

Don't deny what you feel let me undress you baby

Open up your mind and just rest

I'm about to let you know you make me so, so, so, so, so, so,so, so

You make me so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so



Open up and say -- no! Wait a minute! What am I thinking? I'd catch myself. Shekinah Glory Ministry's seemingly 15-minute long Yes song does a whole lot for my Spirit nowadays.

But the battle rages on. After becoming a real Christian a few years ago, I went thru a real judgmental -- yet necessary -- phase where I only listened to Christian music. It was a purifying phase. Then I went back to corporate America in 2004 and had no idea what younger folks were listening to.

"You need to listen to the radio," said Isaac, the selfsame one who teased me for talking like a white girl.



He was right about the music, however, and I did start filtering songs back in here and there with caution. I was in danger of becoming one of those Pharisee- and Sadducee-like "holy rollers" who forget that while Jesus told us to "be in the world but not of it," we still have to "be in the world," not just our own little Christian bubble full of hypocrites.

And when I take it too far, Jesus always sends someone to correct me.

"He's fine," I said about Smokie Norful while talking to a Christian woman I'd just met in the mall.

"You see, when you say 'He's fine,' that's a spirit of lust talking," she replied kindly and with wisdom. "We have to be careful about the kind of music we listen to because the same spirit that is on the person creating it can be transmitted to the listener," she said about other forms of music.

Her words stay with me now. She was also right. Smokie Norful is good-looking, but far beyond that he is a man of God and married -- as am I -- and we cannot confuse that effervescent glory that shines so brightly on men of God with anything else as the devil would have us do.

So I'm back on middle ground now. Somewhere akin to Footloose (no wonder that movie was so popular) -- breaking away from stodgy self-righteousness, enough in the world to know now that the guys who hit me up on BlackPlanet.com with lines like "what it do" got that in part from Lloyd's You video featuring Lil Wayne, who spits that line.

If I don't know even know lines like "let's dip up out of here" are being played, I can't be the voice of love warning girls against reasons for doing that.

The secular world continually seduces, but I feel I'm in a better place in the Lord to listen with some detachment, unlike when I was younger. Yesterday I ripped some songs from my old CDs and listened as I worked out to lyrics that amaze me now with their honest seeking and searching:

Baba Lyrics by Alanis Morissette



I've seen them kneel

with baited breath for the ritual

I've watched this experience raise

them to pseudo higher levels



I've watched them leave their families

in pursuit of your nirvana

I've seen them coming to line up

from Switzerland to America



How long will this take baba

How long have we been sleeping

Do you see me hanging on to

every word you say?



How soon will I be holy?

How much will this cost guru?

How much longer 'til you

completely absolve me?

I've seen them give their drugs up

in place of makeshift altars

I've heard them chanting

kali kali frantically



I've heard them rotely repeat your

teachings with elitism

I've seen them boasting robes and

foreign sandalwood beads



I've seen them overlooking god in

their own essence

I've seen their upward glances

in hopes of instant salvation



I've seen their righteousness

mixed without loving compassion

I've watched you smile as

the students bow to kiss your feet



Give me strength all knowing one

How long 'til enlightenment?

How much longer 'til you

completely absolve me?

I love Alanis and pray she now knows that Christ only can absolve her. And dipping back yesterday into my complete infatuation with Sting and The Police -- this same poster graced one of the slanted walls in my bedroom when I was a teenager -- though I must say that I don't remember Sting's nipple action back then, I was still impressed by Sting's honesty and lyrics that would send me scurrying off the Encyclopedia.

But hearing these afresh made me sad for Sting:





Oh My God by The Police



Everyone I know is lonely

And God is so far away,

And my heart belongs to no one,

So now sometimes I pray

Please take the space between us

And fill it up some way.

Take the space between us

And fill it up some way.

Oh my God you take the biscuit

Treating me this way

Expecting me to treat you well

No matter what you say.

How can I turn the other cheek

It's black and bruised and torn

I've been waiting

Since the day that I was born.

Take the space between us

And fill it up some way.

Take the space between us

And fill it up some way.

The fat man in his garden

The thin man at his gate

My God you must be sleeping

Wake up, it's much too late.

Take the space between us

And fill it up some way.

Take the space between us

And fill it up some way.

Do I have to tell the story

Of a thousand rainy days?

Since we first met,

It's a big enough umbrella

But it's always me that ends up getting wet.



I hope Sting now realizes that he is "the fat man in his garden" and that God never sleeps nor slumbers, but waits for prosperous folks like us to feed "the thin man at" our gate.

Whenever the secular seduction gets too strong, and I wake up with lyrics like Alanis' in my soul in the middle of the night, I return home again, to the type of music that chases away Satan, himself once a music man.

Returning home to gorgeous and powerful songs like the Untitled Hymn (Come to Jesus) song by Chris Rice off his Run the Earth, Watch the Sky CD, the raspy and wonderful MercyMe singing I Can Only Imagine, and Rescue by Newsong sum up my life, fill my empty soul and make me weep with wonder:

I need You Jesus

To come to my rescue

Where else can I go

There's no other name

By which I am saved

Capture me with grace

I will follow You



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