Lady Gaga’s song Judas
is very Lady Gaga-ish; brash, aggressive, contentious, yet engaging, and
perhaps even thoughtful. The song
reveals her familiarity with the Madonna playbook. Step 1: Create a song charged with Christian
imagery intended to toe the line of the church’s perception of irreverence and blasphemy. Step 2: Release that song during Holy
Week. Tempest meet tea cup. Though, to
their credit, a good many in the church have learned to recognize these public
relation slights of hand and refuse to be baited into the furor they may have
been worked up to in the past. What is
not common in the church is the vision to see that the use of Christian imagery
in the arts and pop culture, even if deemed offensive by some, is often one
side of a spiritual conversation waiting to be had. Here Lady Gaga is considering how to handle
betrayal and forgiveness, using the Biblical account of Judas as her
metaphor. This is Lady Gaga inviting the
biblical narrative into a very broad cultural conversation, engaging notions
that form the heart of the gospel. Now I
understand the discomfort. She is
singing she’s in love with the person who betrayed Christ to the Sanhedrin, the
Romans and his execution while pushing the bounds of tailored modesty. I was uncomfortable the first time I heard it
myself. But let’s take a look at this
song and attempt to put aside our discomfort, and possibly offense, and see if
we can’t open ourselves to a more constructive conversation.
So let’s hear from the Lady herself. What does the song mean to her? She says,
'Judas' is a metaphor and an analogy
about forgiveness and betrayal and things that haunt you in your life and how I
believe that it's the darkness in your life that ultimately shines and
illuminates the greater light that you have upon you…the song is about washing
the feet of both good and evil and understanding and forgiving the demons from
your past in order to move into the greatness of your future.
Now the purpose of this little post isn’t to critique the
content of her take on the Judas narrative, but simply to point out that she is
actively engaged and wrestling with it, and to engage in a bit of the other
side of the conversation. Let’s
recognize that she is acknowledging the importance of forgiveness. In the song you find her wrestling with how
to treat someone you’ve forgiven, yet who continues to betray you. The song recognizes the social consequences
of that type of relationship as she continues to attempt to constructively love
her betrayer, yet finds herself clinging to him or her instead. This is the struggle of many a co-dependent
relationship. This is also a question
often asked by those in the Church as well.
The blanket availability of forgiveness for all taught in the Gospel,
and Christ’s command to axiomatically forgive individuals 70x7 times for the
wrongs they do you is something Christians struggle to live out in their
lives. The absoluteness of this circle
of inclusion plays out dramatically in the Judas narrative as Jesus on the
night Judas betrays him, and knowing of the betrayal, washes Judas’ feet. Jesus loved and served Judas to the end. How do we as Christians forgive our betrayers
without encouraging further betrayal, or should the second half of that
question even be a consideration?
Sometimes we Christians have the same questions of the Bible as the
culture around us.
Additionally, Lady Gaga isn’t just engaging scripture, she’s
also engaging the Christian tradition.
Interestingly enough Gaga asserts that she is “obsessed” with Christian
and Religious art. In the chorus of the
song she identifies herself as a holy fool.
Now this really doesn’t have much meaning to Evangelicals and other
Protestants, but the holy fool seems to have greater relevance the further east
you travel in the Christian world. This
notion has its roots in medieval Christianity.
According to our friends at the Oxford Dictionary of World Religions,
holy fools are, “Figures who subvert prevailing orthodoxy and orthopraxis in
order to point to the truth which lies beyond immediate conformity.” These were figures who were often employed in
the extravagant late medieval European Passion Plays. At any rate she is drawing on this tradition
and casting the “character” singing the song (though I strongly suspect this is
how Gaga sees herself) as someone attempting to engage the Church with
perspectives they just aren’t comfortable with.
Whatever you think of her methods of accomplishing this, shouldn’t we in
the Church be open to hear from those who place themselves outside of the
church, or at its margins? Isn’t this a
constructive way of learning how we’re seen through their eyes? The Spirit works in strange ways, perhaps
even through holy fools.
I would suggest that we ignore these opportunities for
cultural spiritual engagement at our own peril.
For us to unilaterally wash our hands of or write off these types of artists
and songs and films and shows and other pop culture texts is to pass a type of overconfident
judgment on both the creation and the artist.
Humility would suggest a more measured approach. Just as the group U2 ponders the fate of
Judas at the end of their song about his final days, Until the End of the World, we too will have to wait until the end
of the world to determine their ultimate value.
But in the same way that we may ultimately be surprised by Judas’ fate,
which is entirely dependent upon God’s justice and mercy, we may also be
surprised in retrospect at the value of lovingly engaging the button pushers
and holy fools in our cultures.
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