Okay, confession time.
I am not a Swiftie.
I know, shocking, isn’t it.
Especially with two daughters who are very passionate, dedicated Swifties. I mean they are up on all the Taylor Swift gossip, trivia, and conspiracy theories. They stay up for each and every album release. Their top 10 songs are pretty much exclusively Taylor. They know every lyric for every song. But yeah, me? Not so much.
I mean, don’t get me wrong. I like who she is and I think she’s a great role model for young women. She is a very prolific songwriter (36 songs on one album? Really?) and has a lot of talent and has worked hard to get where she is now. And I do like some of her songs.
But for the most part, her songs just don’t really move me or speak to me.
With one exception: her song Marjorie.
It’s not her best-known song, and while it was critically acclaimed, it didn’t chart very highly. If you haven’t heard it, I do recommend taking a listen. Swift wrote it about her grandmother, who passed away and it’s a lament about not knowing her better or getting to spend more time with her. A remembrance of the advice and lessons she taught Taylor.
But when I first heard it, it reached down into the very dark place I was in at the time and sparked a light that began to show me the way out.
Now obviously, this wasn’t because I knew anything about her grandmother. (I didn’t even know it was about her until I asked my daughter about it, which led to a good 30-minute lecture on the song and Swift’s family background. Like I said, they know EVERYTHING about Taylor Swift.) And it wasn’t anything inherent in Taylor Swift or her music (As I mentioned, I was pretty indifferent to her and her music up to that point). So what happened that this particular song hit me in a way that nothing had in a very long time?
Simple. God spoke.
At that point in my life, I was in a really dark place, to the point of being almost suicidal. I was struggling with too many things in my life and some significant hurt and betrayal by the church and the people in it. This deeply affected my relationship with God and caused me to walk away from Christianity and the church all together. (I still have some deep, significant problems with Evangelical Christianity here in America, but that’s another article.)
The thing is, God used to speak to me all the time. Through music, through scripture, through other people, but when things went south, I stopped hearing God. All the things He spoke to me about over the years, all the things that I heard Him call me to, all the hope I had found for my life had gone away. It had all died.
Then I heard this song.
If you haven’t listened to it yet, the lyrics, especially the chorus, are subtly potent. (Regardless of what I, or anyone, think of her music, Taylor Swift is an extraordinary storyteller and lyricist.)
What died didn't stay dead What died didn't stay dead You're alive, you're alive in my head What died didn't stay dead What died didn't stay dead You're alive, so alive
Yeah, pretty simple, but at the time, it hit me and ripped a hole in the darkness I had been lost in. That simple chorus embedded itself in my brain and wouldn’t let go until I dove into it and faced what was screaming at me.
And that wasn’t all of it. The choruses start with:
And if I didn't know better I'd think you were talking to me now If I didn't know better I'd think you were still around
And if I didn't know better I'd think you were listening to me now If I didn't know better I'd think you were still around
And the song ends with
And if I didn't know better I'd think you were singing to me now If I didn't know better I'd think you were still around I know better But I still feel you all around I know better But you're still around
Still with me? Maybe you can start to see how I found in these words of longing for her late grandmother, a spark of the hope that had been missing. God spoke to my soul and said that which you thought was dead, was not. God was still talking to me, still listening to me, still singing to me. He was still around. “What died didn’t stay dead!”
So maybe I’m a little bit of a Swiftie.
But that’s not really my point today. I actually want to talk about something else that this story represents.
You see, by most standards, Taylor Swift isn’t a “Christian Artist”. That’s not to say that Swift isn’t a Christian, far from it. I think her actions, attitudes, and life reflect more of the Gospel than most Evangelical Christians do today. Now, is she a Christian? I don’t know. That’s between her and God and really none of my business. But the point that I want to make is that for all intents and purposes, her music is considered secular.
Wait, are you telling me that God spoke to you through music that isn’t considered “Sacred” (you know, music that is specifically about God and is “Anointed” by Him)?
Yep. That’s exactly what I’m saying. I’m saying that there really is no difference between the sacred and the secular.
According to Webster’s dictionary, sacred is:
dedicated or set apart for the service or worship of a deity. devoted exclusively to one service or use (as of a person or purpose).
And secular is defined as:
of or relating to the worldly or temporal. not overtly or specifically religious.
We have a very clear delineation between the two and we expect God to follow that delineation. To use the sacred, the consecrated because God is sacred. And the secular is not. It’s the mundane, the normal, “worldly”. It’s the things that God says not to be a part of (look at 1 John,2:15-17).
And yet, there’s that Taylor Swift song…
Take a look at Numbers 22:21-39. I’m not going to type out the whole scripture, but suffice it to say that Balaam was being a jerk to his donkey and:
“Then the Lord opened the donkey’s mouth, and it said to Balaam, “What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?”
Yeah, God spoke to Balaam through his donkey. Not exactly what one would consider a “Sacred” animal. What’s more, there was an angel hanging out, which is what caused the donkey to stop. So why didn’t God just speak to Balaam through the angel? (Which He ended up doing anyway.)
(On a side note, the musician Rich Mullens once pointed out, “God spoke to Balaam through his ass, and He has been speaking through asses ever since. So, if God should choose to speak through you, you need not think too highly of yourself.”)
But I think part of it was that God uses whatever He wants to speak to us and if we find a distinction between sacred and secular, it’s because we put it there.
Because what makes the sacred, sacred?
It’s God’s touch. God’s presence. And if God chooses to touch the secular, if He chooses to inhabit the secular, then it becomes sacred.
I remember when my daughters were babies and I would rock and sing them to sleep. In those quiet, mundane, late night, secular moments, God would be there. And those became the sacred moments.
There’s a scene in the movie “Bruce Almighty” where Jim Carey is driving and asking God for a sign. A truck pulls in front of him with a bunch of road signs in the back telling him to stop, go back, dead end, wrong way, and his response is “what is this yahoo doing? Get out of my way!”. It’s played for laughs (and it is a pretty funny scene), but the point is that Bruce is looking for the sacred, and God spoke through the secular. And Bruce missed it. (By the way, if you haven’t seen it, it really is a great movie and makes some very powerful, spiritual points. Go see it.) (But don’t bother with the sequel. It kinda sucked.)
When we only look for God in the sacred, we can miss Him. We limit God when God says I am limitless. I am not bound by your distinctions of sacred and secular.
If you think about how Jesus taught, he didn’t use big, theological, spiritual, fancy words and images. He used simple, everyday examples: farming, money, family, kings and peasants, masters and servants, you know, the secular stuff.
So where does this leave us?
Ephesians 1:18 says “pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you”. And that’s pretty much it. We need to be open to whatever and whoever God wants to use to speak to us. Remember, God speaks with a “still, small voice” and if we’re not listening, if we’re not looking for it, if we’re dismissing what we think of as secular, we can miss it.
What is in your life that you think of as secular that maybe God is using to speak to you? Your family? Your job? Maybe music that you wouldn’t consider sacred? Books that aren’t the Bible? (Check out Kurt Vonnegut’s quote about the 10 commandments and the Beatitudes.) Believe that God can use anything (As the rock band Journey said, “Don’t stop believing”) and be on the lookout for it. When we stop judging by our definitions of sacred and secular, we will start to see God’s definition: everything is sacred when God chooses to use it.
Finally, we need to always measure what we hear against the standard that God has set for us: Love. God said that they would know we are his disciples by our love. Not our theology, not our knowledge of the bible, not our politics, not our bumper stickers or t-shirts, but by our love. How we treat others. How we accept others, how we take care of others. How we love others.
Taylor Swift doesn’t know who I am, and she doesn’t know the impact her song had on me, but God knew what I needed to hear at that time. He chose a song by a secular artist about her dead grandmother and said, “This song speaks with my voice to your need.”
“This song is sacred.”
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