A serious “HOTT” mess…

Funny enough, that is not what a lot of people would think of my marriage to Lilly. From the outside, people think that our marriage is one big musical – and that’s because we are both musicians. But take it from me, there isn’t much singing or rapping in the house when two “creative” sinners have to share one space.

My wife is truly a 21^st century inner-city girl . Much of her experiences were shaped by the Johannesburg underground art scene. Though, as much as the streets of Jozi unearthed her vibrantly colourful personality – which is a good thing, they also taught her how to embrace her natural rebellion against the God of the universe.

Concurrently, Lilly also came from a home where her mother was overtly Christian and this also had a strong influence in the development of Lilly’s womanhood. The streets gave her confidence to think, while her mother gave her confidence to believe. However, the result of this combination was not as sweet…the “god” she intellectually believed in, was not the same God her mother trusted.

Lilly and I met and became friends during my 1^st year in varsity. However, it was post varsity when we decided to take this “Jesus thing” seriously. Taking this “Jesus thing” seriously for us merely meant, going to church regularly, praying and fasting as much as possible. Unfortunately, we had dodgy teaching, and somehow we believed that we were specially handpicked by God to continue writing the bible.

It wasn’t until I was introduced to the doctrines of grace that I realised how unbiblical our “Jesus thing” truly was. My heart and mind were rocked and my eyes were opened. I went to tell Lilly about what I had discovered. At that time we had been friends for 5 years and had only been dating for 5 months. She was the person who encouraged me to take this “Jesus thing” seriously, and now, I was going to turn around and crush her whole world by telling her that what we had believed was not the real thing.

This began the most painful year in our relationship. My wife (then fiancé) had never been so theologically challenged before – God was doing something in her heart. As He challenged me, He used me as an instrument to draw His daughter to Himself. We had long nights of WhatsApp conversations about scripture, its doctrines and applications. Dates that started off well but progressed into theological warfare, and prayers for marriage, that ended up as dreams for singlehood.

However, her streetwise, very dismissive “I’m a free thinker” attitude was fading away, because there was a real work of the spirit happening inside of her.

Lilly soon realised that our old “Jesus thing” required only her emotions to be engaged and not her mind. But now she was seeing that God doesn’t call us into a blind faith but He encourages us to intellectually engage with His truth. So faith and intellectuality were no longer mutually exclusive, this brought a real excitement for the Christian faith in her life.

In the past couple of years, I have seen a hard-core rebel  – who hated the true God, loved herself and her ideals more– being crushed and torn, destroyed and rebuilt, stripped away and being clothed with the likeness of her King.

My wife is the realest! Seeing her wrestling with her faith in her music, with so much honesty, pursuing confidence in the cross, especially when she has to stand on stages and sing to crowds that are by nature hostile towards her God, is wonderful. This has made her a beast of an artist. Witnessing her wanting to give more and more of her talents and gifts to serving God has inspired me to solider on in my music as well.

From one artist to another, seeing the greatest Artist of all time showing off His glory through my wife, has certainly been the best art I’ve seen.

By Blaque Nubon

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Our mandate is as it has always been: {CHANTING}, “stay in the shadows, hide in the cupboards, men want to sin, let ‘em all in!” Yes cronies, our timing is puurrrfect! People are convinced, at last, that love is all they need- since love now stands for money and all that money promises, when they say they need love, they mean they need money!!! Hahaha! This plan combines the love of money with the love of pleasure. Humans looooove pleasure. They love feeling good; they write songs about feeling good, change their bodies to feel good and put up posters about feeling good to sell things guaranteed to make them feel good. They are primed.

Before I start, I wanted to address this: I’ve heard murmurs from the lot of you about the fact that we keep recycling one idea and changing its name.[eltdf_blockquote text=” Those who think like this have no vision and are therefore nincompoops! Humans want to deny objective morality and elevate their own desires. The Most High successfully wrote his laws on their hearts and the tension created by the knowledge of right from wrong versus their naughty desires can only be eased by telling elaborate lies with great names.” title_tag=”h2″ width=””] If you don’t understand the basics of Lyology, then you might as well submit your resignation. See if heaven will have you! No takers? Alright then!

So on with business –things are going to get technical now so I suggest all intern cronies pair up with senior cronies– our new project borrows a few concepts from one of our golden oldies. Some of you will remember it by the term “Sugar daddy”. The “sugar daddy” phenomenon was reminiscent of a genie tale: “like a genie – he may be a little old, but if a girl rubs his lamp, he’ll grant her wishes”. And grant wishes our genies did! But the humans of today don’t identify with that term; too many negative connotations have rendered this golden oldie term irrelevant. We have thus rebranded the term and called it Blessers and Blessees. The prostitute became a call girl who then became a sugar baby then a blessee… much less scandalous.

Sugar daddies and their sugar babies have been replaced by blessers and their blessees. Think employer-employee. This new name is perfect for its obvious religious ties… and if you’re adventurous, gag opportunities. This new name sounds innocent, playful and maybe even pious. And if you can find an innocent sounding name for an otherwise distasteful deed, you have won 70% of the promo battle. Now, in order for humans to continue supressing the truth, they need a little help excusing themselves and attempting to explain the sin away so we’re throwing in extra material; we are going to add a bunch of entrepreneurial-feminist sounding mumbo-jumbo to get people behind it. By the time we’re done with this, humans will feel no shame when identifying as blessees and blessers, want social acceptance and desire admiration for detecting an on-demand-resource and capitalising on it.

We will elevate the blessee to a regular employee who could no longer comply with not placing a monetary value on a prized resource and cause those who have that same valued resource but choose to give it away for free to feel a level of shame – “you can’t say you tried everything to make a living when you didn’t really try E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G now can you?” we’ll whisper to them. My absolute favourite aspect about this new gem is that it has the potential to cause maximum damage over an array of human groups; husbands, wives, women, college graduates, business men and teenagers will jump all over it. It will cut across international, class and racial barriers, bringing sinners together in a magnificent debacle of weary dressed like pleasure, opportunity and joy. They will love it, defend it, and endorse it. Cronies, I cannot emphasis enough how wonderful new project is – we therefore need to tell our prey the consistent lie of the age: pleasure is the ultimate good and suffering, in any form, is the ultimate evil. We will make them believe that giving away their bodies is a small sacrifice to pay to secure the pleasure they long for.

And when the feminists object and the Christians write blogs and submit prayers, we’ll be whispering in the ears of those who will listen “they’re just mad ‘cause you getting paid, you’re smart”; then when we’re burning together under the fury of the Most High, we’ll be sure to have them with us. {CHEERING}

As always cronies, we have to maintain full deniability. If anyone catches on to the existence of our fabulous principalities at play in this – like we feature in everything else that is naughty –, our plan may backfire and humans may come to the conclusion that our existence must confirm the existence of the Most High exists. And we don’t want that now do we?!

And with that cronies, I bid you all adieu. {CHANTING}, “stay in the shadows, hide in the cupboards, men want to sin, let ‘em all in!”

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Social justice has always been important to the Lord. He has always been a God for the disenfranchised and the oppressed in society, a God who cares for the widows and orphans. He is a God of Justice and He will judge wrongdoings.

Yet, why do I sense I’m getting lost in the noise and emotion of all the various movements? So much so, that I’ve somehow lost sight of the Lord in the process. What I’m hearing in the #mustfall movements seems to be shutting out the gospel, seems to almost be excluding God.

It’s just that, with all the vigour and emotion I’m seeing lately, you’d swear that #mustfall is the salvation of our people. That living in a racially harmonious society is what we truly need, that if we all had unhindered assess to good facilities regardless of socio-economic status then we could truly be free and happy. That free education is the final step in our emancipation. Granted, those are all good ideals …however, what would be the point of gaining all these privileges (rights?) and still losing your soul?

What’s Gods agenda though? Is God for #mustfall movements?

[eltdf_blockquote text=”The question isn’t which side is God on – but rather, am I on His side? God is in the business of saving souls. All souls. Our souls know no colour, but are universally tainted with the same ugly stain of sin. We’re all born spiritually equal; all born with the exact same spiritual attribute – we were dead. God is in the business of bringing dead souls to life.” title_tag=”h2″ width=””]

I’m wondering if I’ve gotten so caught up in #mustfall movements that I’m no longer being about my Fathers business. God’s agenda is so much bigger than all our issues combined. These movements are only temporarily fixes. It’s like giving cough mixture to someone suffering a heart attack. The cough mixture really can’t do much in that situation. While it is medicine, it’s not the correct prescription for the ailment.

#Mustfall movements could lead to the provision of temporally relief for the disgruntled masses, but they won’t fix the true problems we have as a people. So, even if #rhodesfalls #feesfall #zumafalls, #afrikaansfalls, #outsourcingfalls and even #Nkandlafalls…even then…your soul is still dead in your sins and transgressions. Your sins still need forgiveness. Happily ever after does not exist on this side of eternity. Once #allhasfallen, there will arise another inequality which needs protesting (and protest you must if needs be).

The Lord however, is the great physician. He’s already fixed our truest and deepest need; more than we need racial harmony, more than we need equality for all, more than we need free education, even more than we need our daily bread – we need forgiveness for our sins. That’s something you can’t buy, that’s something white privilege won’t get you, that’s something your disadvantaged background has not excluded you from. The work of Christ on the cross is freely available to all. Because all our souls are stained with sin and His blood is the only cure. Before all else…#sinmustfall… #forgivnessonlyatthecross…#dontgetlostinthenoise.

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Okay okay. Some might wonder what the lordship of Christ would have to do with art yet alone culture, especially when considering that for decades the church has seemed rather apathetic to both. The best way I can tackle this (without turning this post into a book) is by taking a walk through the gospel narrative that runs through the pages of the Scriptures.

The song of creation in the first chapter of Genesis is simply beautiful; God spoke everything into being and all He created was good. The climax of God’s design was the creation of man, whom He made in His own image. What’s more, He described mankind as “very good”. In subsequent chapters, God gave both the male and female a mandate to tend the garden, to keep it and to preserve it. Life was as it was supposed to be: Utopia. Then, the most unfortunate event took place.  The first image-bearers of God, Adam and Eve, were deceived.  Immediately following this deception, they chose to directly disobey God by indulging in fruit he forbade them to eat or to even touch. However, they ate it and thus became separated from God. All of creation was tainted; the first sin cultivated the breeding ground for all forms of distortion, even distorting the way we engage in the world around us and especially distorting the heart within us. 

[eltdf_blockquote text=”The plunge of the whole human race into darkness left us in dire need of redemption. For the Christian, the redemption of the soul begins and ends in Jesus Christ. In fact, the redemption of all things (think culture, relationships, art and even womanhood) is no different than the redeeming of one’s soul; Jesus Christ is the focus.” title_tag=”h2″ width=””] One may ask, “Why have I been redeemed?” We have been redeemed so that we can understand the purpose of God’s design for life. I like how the Westminster Catechism puts it, saying, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.” (1 Cor 10:31) We can only do this because of what Jesus accomplished on the cross for all who believe. Great! That is the bottom line. Yet all too often, one may sit and gaze at this truth and still wonder if one is doing things right. Take the classic case of the redeemed artist who is plagued with questions about whether or not artwork is a good and godly thing. Consider the accountant who ponders how balancing a ledger pleases God? What does the outworking of faith look and feel like?

We can take comfort in this: Christ always has been and always will be Lord over all. Colossians 1v15-23 helps us understand this. It reads,

“The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

One of the greatest advocates of the lordship of Christ over the whole man (as opposed to the view many hold fast to: that Christ has come to only save the soul and equip missionaries and gospel workers, and that God pays no mind to the rest of life) is Dr. Francis Schaeffer who uses art to set the platform for us to enter into good discussion or great debate about Christ’s lordship. He states in his book, Art and the Bible:

“As Evangelical Christians we have tended to relegate art to the very fringe of life… We have misunderstood the very concept of the Lordship of Christ over the whole man and the whole universe and have not taken to us the riches that the Bible gives us for ourselves, for our lives and for our culture. The lordship of Christ over the whole of life means that there is no platonic areas in Christianity, no dichotomy or hierarchy between the body and the soul. God made the body as well as the soul and redemption is for the whole man…God made the whole man…In Christ the whole man is redeemed…Christ is the Lord of the whole man now and the Lord of the whole Christian life and…in the future as Christ comes back, the body will be raised from the dead and the whole man will have a whole redemption. It is within this framework that we are to understand the place of art [and all things*] in the Christian life.” *Interjection mine

The struggle for us women to present all that we are before the Lord is real, especially in an age of multiple choice. Should I be married or stay single to work in the mission field?  Should I study architecture or nursing? Should I home-school or pursue a career as a marketing executive? Whatever the struggle, present it to the Lord who cares not only for you, but about what you do. He is Lord over all. Abraham Kuyper summed this up superbly when he said,

“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”

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