“Here Ye, Here Ye,” saith the crier, “Pity the country whose king chooses minstrels and clowns for his clerics and sages!”

Anonymous

Her name is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, most know her simply as “Gaga”. That is right, Lady Gaga. She chose the name “Gaga” after the Rock Group Queen’s song, “Radio Ga Ga.” Ironically, ‘gaga’ in the French language means “senile” or “crazy”. And it is an apt description for a singer who sings about “poker faces, paparazzi and perfect illusions.” But in our wacky America, people on stage silhouetted by fog machines and wearing next to nothing, have now become our oracles. Indeed, the minstrel is the cleric – and the media is lapping it up. They have been deluded into believing that Gaga pulls pearls of truth from a fresh deep well of stored up wisdom that we, her adoring public, all must drink from. This, my dear friends, is “the perfect illusion.”

So what grand insight does she share with her adoring fans? Earlier this week Lady Gaga verbally rebuked Karen Pence, the Vice President’s wife, for working as a teacher at a Christian school. And this Christian school has moral standards for students if they want to attend, namely, you must not participate in sexual deviancy as detailed in Romans 1:21-32. Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? A Christian institution should be allowed to live by Christain convictions, right?

Not to her highness Madam Gaga. Ben Kesslen, an NBC reporter, who points to Gaga’s multiple Grammy awards to prove her moral credibility, details what she said. “In front of an audience of more than 5,000 fans, Lady Gaga interrupted her Las Vegas performance on Saturday to call out Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen.

“’To Mike Pence, who thinks it’s acceptable that his wife work at a school that bans LGBTQ, you are wrong… You say we should not discriminate against Christianity. You are the worst representation of what it means to be a Christian,’ Lady Gaga, a longtime supporter of LGBTQ rights, said while seated at a piano at MGM’s Park Theater. And then she added, ‘I am a Christian woman, and what I do know about Christianity is that we bear no prejudice, and everybody is welcome,'” 

And then on the same night, the late-night comic, Trevor Noah, adds his own disparaging two cents in front of a live fawning and guffawing audience, “I’m not going to lie,” Noah said. “I think it’s crazy that if you want to discriminate against anyone in America all you have to do is say, ‘Oh, it’s because of my religion! I’m not discriminating!’ I want to try that. I want to be like, ‘No short people allowed in my shows because I want all my friends to be close to Jesus and you couldn’t be further away.’” The clown has become the sage.

Mean old Karen Pence, how dare she work at a Christian school that lives by their convictions? How barbaric!

So, how shall we as Bible believing Christians respond? Get angry, point out the blatant hypocrisy of the minstrel and comic? “Oh sure, Christians must show tolerance to the those they disagree with; while everyone else is allowed to blast away at Christians and show zero tolerance of their beliefs? How unfair!” But settle down for a second my Christian friend. Before you get all riled up, remember Jesus tells us to “never return evil for evil,” and “pray for those who curse you.” Don’t let the minstrel and clown get under your skin, that is what they are hired to do. Too often Christians take their bait.

But let’s not let their “crazy” comments go unchallenged. Often when we don’t offer reasonable responses people think we have nothing to offer. But we do, just don’t expect those who bow to Gaga and Noah to listen to reason. The first question we must always answer is this: “Who speaks for God?” Do we really think the minstrel and clown have the inside information on the Holy God? Do you really think that God shares his deepest thoughts to the sexually provocative singer and a late-night mocker? Do they really get to speak for him?

There is only one person who has officially been chosen by God himself to speak on his behalf and to tell us what he is like? Listen to John 3:31, “The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all. He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony.” The man from heaven is of course Jesus. Where did Gaga and Trevor Noah come from? I have a few possible suggestions.

And then Jesus says later on 5:43, “I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him.” That is the point, we love the oracles of earthlings, but heaven’s opinion is thrown out and stepped upon by the bedazzled high-heeled shoes of Gaga. For instance…

(1) Did you know Gaga’s argument is based on a patently false argument which usually goes like this, “Jesus never once said anything against LGBTQ practitioners? So who gives the conservative Christian the right to say they are wrong?” Ah, but wait for a second my fair Lady, Jesus did say in Matthew 5:18-19, “For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. So then, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do likewise will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever practices and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

In this statement, Jesus is clearly supporting and defending all of the Mosaic teachings including the “sexual deviancy” laws found in Leviticus, which condemns homosexuality and cross-dressing. If you want to make the argument that since he doesn’t straight up condemn homosexuality it must not be wrong. But that is a fallacious argument. He never once straight up condemned rape or incest…but the Levitical codes sure do (and so does Gaga and Trevor Noah).

(2) There is a strange belief that Matthew 7:1 condemns the judgment of other’s actions whatsoever they do, “Judge not lest ye be judged.” But don’t stop there, keep reading. Matthew 7:2-6 talks about the necessity of judging after you first judge yourself. In fact, judging in the sense of “evaluating good and bad behavior” is something we all must do (see Colossians 3:16, 1 Corinthians 15:33). The reason we must warn about bad behavior is that God will judge it on the last day. Just read John 12:48, Romans 2:5-7, and Revelation 20:12.

What these verses teach is that “true love, true compassion, warns others about the danger of moral deviancy especially as the Day of the Lord approaches, when Jesus comes to judges the world for their sinful behavior.”

The minstrel, Lady Gaga, and the comic, Trevor Noah, want popularity and popularity bows it’s knees to the false and foolish god whose name is “Tolerance.” In the book “Gagging of God” D.A. Carson writes this about the modern god of tolerance, “Philosophical pluralism, that any notion that a particular ideological or religious claim is intrinsically superior to another is necessarily wrong. The only absolute creed is the creed of pluralism. No religion has the right to pronounce itself right or true,” and as a result, pluralism has “put a gag on God.” And this is exactly what Gaga is trying to do.

And to go a step further, the person who is the most loyal to the Holy God is the person who has the courage to publically take off his gag and tell it like it is, especially when it comes to right and wrong. One of the most distinguishing marks of the ancient Prophet Noah was that he was saved from dying in the world-wide flood of Genesis precisely because he was, “a preacher of righteousness (2 Peter 2:5).” Which means that Trevor Noah is no Noah.

D. A. Carson finishes his book by saying, “On the night he was betrayed, Jesus prayed, ‘Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth’ (John 17:17) – and there will never be much sanctification apart from the Word of Truth. It is the entrance that brings light; it is constant meditation of God’s law that distinguishes the wise from the unwise, the just from the unjust (Psalm 1).”

But tragically, in our pop-culture driven age, the minstrel has become the cleric, the comic the sage, “More’s the Pity”.