Jay Z and Beyoncé Bankrolling Liberty or Slavery?
Jay Z and Beyoncé Bankrolling Liberty or Slavery?
by Jake MacAulay
Jay Z and Beyoncé bankrolled protesters in Baltimore and Ferguson with tens of thousands of dollars in bail money, a writer and social activist close to both of them claimed.
“I can say I’ve personally helped facilitate donations they’ve given to protesters directly and that they never ask for anything in return, especially publicity,” author Dream Hampton told the Daily News in an email.
In my former life I was a big fan of Pop culture and it consumed a lot of my life. So hearing that Jay Z and Beyoncé (both multiplatinum recording artists) wired thousands of dollars in bail money to “Liberate” detained protesters in both Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, would have been a big deal to me and many of my friends.
I realize that at one time in my life Liberty had an entirely different meaning that what it truly means. And I know that countless Americans are still under the same delusion I once was.
We would have seen these artists, as icons for Liberty…Their explicit and immoral lyrics would have epitomized Freedom to us! Freedom of Speech, Expression, and now Freedom to protest against police brutality! This thought process of course is oxymoronical.
Liberty can never come in the form of lawlessness and immorality, both themes consistent to these artists music and in this case their charitable giving. Lawlessness and immorality only produce bondage, subjugation, slavery.
One example of how lawless, unbiblical thinking leads to crime is the out-of-wedlock birth rate that has increased from 6% in 1965 to about 40% currently. And consider that over 70% of the inmates in prison come from single-parent homes.
After a conversion experience in my life by God’s Sovereign and Gracious hand I have an entirely renewed outlook on life. I am no longer a slave to my sinful disposition. Instead of admiring Jay Z and Beyoncé as the musically, and artistically talented superstars they are, I lament the message that they both promote in their music. And their reported help of looters is something that I now see as most regrettable.
I guess my story can have at least two conclusions<b>.</b> First my former life was evidence that the influence of Pop-culture can lead to a very ignorant and destructive worldview. And secondly, by God’s Grace, a destructive worldview can be transformed into a desire to hear and to promote God’s Truths.
Justice Learned Hand said, “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it lies there, it needs no law, no constitution to keep it. When it dies there, no law, no constitution can save it.”
If people abided by the Golden Rule of, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” we would have true Liberty.
President John Adams concluded my topic today with great prescient brilliance … “we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
If our experiment in self-government is failing, it is because we have failed to govern ourselves.