Tags
Shai Linne: Things Used for Evil to Glorify God
‘Holy’ hip-hop is not a venue in Christianity. It’s an excuse to bring worldliness into the Church, and it’s working. – Joel Taylor
To those who say, "How can you take that thing that is used for evil and glorify God with it?" My two word answer is "The Cross." The central act of redemptive history involved God Himself doing that very thing! (See 1 Cor. 1:18-25) …. Once God has redeemed a person, it’s fitting for the Christian to take the "genres" or vehicles…that he or she once used for evil and now use them to promote the glory of God. – Shai Linne
Brethren, I Corinthians 1:18-25 encourages no believer to take anything once used for evil and to glorify God with it.
Shai Linne wants you to believe that Hip-Hop is like the cross, that you and God can use it to glorify Himself.
You have two obvious problems:
- You’re not God
- The Word of God never tells you to do that, in fact, God says do the opposite.
Let’s say a career criminal is born again. According to Shai, what that criminal once used, knew and was familiar with, can now be used to glorify God.
Biblically speaking, that dog won’t hunt.
If Shai’s thinking is biblical, why not kidnap a child after school – which the world uses for evil – so we can tell that child the Gospel and glorify God?
Why not rob someone in the grocery parking lot – which the world might use for evil – so we can tell them the Gospel?
Why not beat a war veteran in a wheelchair close to death – which the world would use for evil – so we can verbally stress their need for Jesus?
Let’s have sex with a prostitute so we can share the Gospel. Why not? We’re redeemed, so we can use that, right?
Shai Linne, in the above statement says clearly it’s ok to use something evil to the glory of God. So why not use something the world uses for evil so that we can glorify God?
Because God tells you not to. To wit:
- 3 John 1:11; Do not imitate evil. ‘Holy’ hip-hop does that very thing, imitating the world.
- I Thess. 5:22 Abstain from every form of evil. Does holy hip-hop look, smell, walk, talk or seem like the worldly version? Yes, it does.
Because you’ve been crucified to the world, and the world has been crucified to you if you are truly in Christ, you will reject this ‘holy’ hip-hop eventually.
Think. ‘Holy’ hip-hop is not a venue in Christianity. It’s an excuse to bring worldliness into the Church, and it’s working.
After the Lord Jesus was taken down off the cross, the cross was still an instrument of death. It wasn’t redeemed from the culture to the glory of God. It was still a chunk of wood that rotted. The cross, in the end and of itself, was nothing. Shai Linne uses this reasoning to justify his career. Maybe you use it to justify something else. He as well as other ‘holy hip-hop’ artists also use the cross to justify their excuses for looking, acting like the world.
Grammy anyone? Do not be deceived.
Some straw men arguments need to be burned, and theirs is one of them, for the sake of the Church.
Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy." – Revelation 22:11
So I ask a question, for all those who come to accept Jesus Christ as there saviour through the ministry of Christian Hip Hop, who turn from their sinful life and live lives for the cause of Christ. Are they condemned to HELL, because they came to faith through hip hop?
My question would be, is the Hip Hop in itself evil, or is it a vessel that some use for evil. If it is the latter then could one not take the vessel and use it for God instead. If everything that is used as a vessel for evil where hands off, then we are in trouble as Christians…
Bad question. You’ve missed the point of the post. Please read again.
Sorry if I got off topic, I do understand your point of the post, and I don’t disagree with it, but I was attempting to inquire your thoughts of “Hip Hop” as a venue in Christianity…
Hip-hop is not a venue in Christianity. It’s an excuse to bring worldliness into the Church.
“Brethren, I Corinthians 1:18-25 encourages no believer to take anything evil and to glorify God with it.”
The question he was answering wasn’t about using something evil to glorify God (as you stated it) but to take something USED for evil to glorify God. Hip hop, in and of itself, isn’t evil, any more than the various secular melodies used for many hymns. And why single out hip hop? There are vile songs in pretty much every musical genre.]
I completely agree with the bulk of your post. Christians should not use evil to try and glorify God. But I think your use and misrepresentation of Shai Linne’s quote is the straw man.
and I think you’re justifying what you like, ignoring God’s Word.
Where have I ignored God’s word? I understand that you think that Hip Hop is evil, and therefore should be avoided and maybe even lambasted, but the Bible doesn’t tell me that hip hop is evil or worldly. Should I as a Christian never drink a beer because it’s associated with riotous living (in the minds of some)? Or should a Christian woman never wear a swimsuit because Sports Illustrated has a swimsuit issue? That kind of thinking can be taken to legalistic extremes.
I guess the issue is, what constitutes worldliness? In my opinion, not being of this world doesn’t mean wearing a red hat because everyone else is wearing a blue one, but to have integrity when we are constantly encouraged to compromise it (just as an example). I think hip hop falls into that red hat/blue hat category.
God uses us in spite of ourselves but such mercy is not a justification for remaining unwise, immature, unrefined, and led about by childish reasoning and so on. Suppose some girl in a tight dress tells someone about the gospel and they get saved, does that justify her immodesty? No.
And the Bible does not “technically” tell us which dresses are too tight and which are not because it requires some wisdom, some discretion and some maturity. Just as in music, we are to understand through principles which is immodest and worldly and which is not.
You can write the gospel in smeared feces and someone might get saved, does it justify that? Does it suddenly sanction such vulgarity? No.
Just because The Gospel Coalition, John Piper, and Mark Dever had an attack of “Black Trophyism” and said nice things about Shai Linne you put your brain in park? They use black people like paper towels. They don’t listen to Shai Linne and have no interest in his way of life, at all, other than as a “black trophy”. Don’t kid yourself.
Oh wait, John Piper adopted a black girl (this is called objectifying) to show how “not-racist” he is. Talk about ironies of ironies.
But I digress, this isn’t about “black” per se. But it really is, not from Joel’s standpoint but from the standpoint of those in Neo-Reformed/Neo-Calvinist circles who promote this. It is their “objectification of Christians who are black” with one of the most condescending ploys ever hoisted upon Christians who are black. It is as if to say, “We know our music isn’t for you and you have your own and we are so proud of you, good boy”. What fools.
Rap is crude, at best. It is the dressing of a pauper, of the ignorant and of the barren soul who foolishly tells himself that dissonance is the sound of majestic divinity. It is an adult playing with the mud-pies of children and calling people to dinner as if they are genuinely edible. But hey, throw some vegetables in the middle of the mud-pies and call it something to eat because there appears to be a line of simpletons waiting for this grimy dish.
Alex, I do not know you, but I wonder – did John Piper tell you his motive in adopting a black child or you are omniscient? If neither is the case – I cannot fathom what broader Christian purpose that particular slander supports.
As the white grandfather of 3 black children, I wonder if I too would likewise be the object of your vacuous observations?
I am no Piper fan, but is it too much to expect Christians to stick to salient doctrinal issues and minimize making motive pronoucements to which they are not privy??
If her blackness was not relevant he would have never made it the highlight he did in “Bloodlines” (and beyond). It was and is a bragging point of his “non-racism”. It does not require omniscience to observe and point out irony.
Alex: You wrote “They use black people like paper towels.” That is, if nothing else, an extremely harsh and subjective opinion, And ONLY an opinion. Your justification for such a gloomy view seems to me to be lacking – intellectually and spiritually…and bereft of genuine evidence. It’s one thing to make legitimate theological complaits about Piper et al, but this strikes me as picayune at best, and slanderous at worst.