We Found Love

Rihanna's new single and the accompanying video have caught my attention recently. Not just because Belfast was chosen as the "hopeless place". Thanks for that luv. 

"We found love in a hopeless place". From the first time I heard the song it fascinated me. The video is bizarre, graphic and some have understandably found it a little disturbing, particularly in that it seems to glorify in particular drug use and an altogether pretty reckless lifestyle. Some would argue that the video is promoting and encouraging young people to engage in this lifestyle, others would say that she's simply reflecting the current culture amongst our young people.       

   

We cannot be naive as to place all responsibility on individuals like Rihanna, but it is also obvious that such figures have a huge influence on what young people view as acceptable or even beneficial.    

   

But I've been inspired by a fellow youth minister to look beyond the initial shock and opposition to the values of the video. Instead of choosing to reject the video outright, what is this telling me about our current culture? Is there a way to engage with what it?    

   

The video opens with a female voice, quiet, soft and broken...

"...you almost feel ashamed, that someone could be that important, that without them you feel like nothing.... you feel hopeless like nothing can save you. And when it's over and it's gone, you almost wish that you could have all that bad stuff back, so that you have the good." 

The video shows a messy, volatile relationship based on intense experiences, often involving risky or illegal activity. 2 young adults looking for a good time, and for love. It ends with Rihanna walking out on the relationship with her boyfriend lying on the floor either wasted or stoned. It would seem that eventually she gets fed up and walks out, knowing how unhealthy the relationship is, but the final scene brings us back to the start... is the bad stuff worth it, so that we can experience the good?   

   

What I experience watching this video, is a deep cry to experience real love. A deep desire to be connected to something, to someone. Even if that means taking risks and enduring the bad.   

   

Someone once commented on the AIDS crisis, that even in the glaring possibility of a deadly disease, people were willing to take that risk on to find and experience love.   

   

Our postmodern world emphasises experience, reflected in a rejection of traditional values and life patterns (eg. later marriage and child-birth). Yet this world though very different, still leaves us yearning for the experience of love, of intimacy.    

   

When we think of Jesus, we often think of church - clean, nice buildings full of nice people, in nice clothes. Very different images from what we see in this video. When we see videos like Rihanna's we often conclude that these are "unholy", "ungodly"... Often they make our hearts hard. Yet what challenges me, is that Jesus was found in these hopeless places. That the love and intimacy we yearn for, can be found in hopeless places, because that's often where Jesus was found: eating with tax collectors and sinners, talking to prostitutes.    

   

It's all too easy to comment on the glorification of drug use and sex in Rihanna's video. I could easily point out how she is leading the young people of our world astray. And I wouldn't be wrong. In fact it's important to be engaged in these discussions. But if that's all we do, then we lack the compassion and the courage of Jesus, who wasn't only interested in pointing out sin, but He saw beyond their behaviour and saw their hearts, their brokenness and their longing for love.   

   

When the young people I work with reflect the culture around them, my job is not to point out their sin and tell them to stop. Naming sin is important, but so much more than that, I long to  help them explore and navigate their world, to understand their and identify brokenness in contrast to the life and hope that Jesus brings.    

   

The whore, the tax collector, my friend Melanie, and myself. We found love in a hopeless place. Because Jesus doesn't just hang out in churches.