Question of the Week: What is the Christian Response to Lil Nas X’s Satanic Shoes?
When someone who doesn’t know God acts like it, we shouldn’t be surprised. When someone who claims to know God doesn’t act like it, they should be held to the standard they claim for themselves. Lil Nas X is not and has never claimed to be a Christian. He is a practicing Satanist. In order to properly respond to his actions in producing this shoe, we first need to understand where this individual is coming from.
Satanism, contrary to popular belief, isn’t actually the worship of Satan. Luciferians would be understood as those who proactively claim that the fallen angel Lucifer is the being they worship. Satanists follow the example of their founder Anton Levey. During the Sexual Revolution and the Hippy Movement, rebellion against Judeo-Christian values had become the mainstream position of most in American culture. How this manifested varied from person to person, but the Church of Satan was essentially founded to mock Christianity in the most literal way possible. The actual beliefs of most Satanists are atheistic, but they consider the idea of a rebel against God in Christianity an example they consider virtuous and worth emulating. Rebellion against a moral authority becomes their moral authority. Any practice or ceremony beyond this is simply an attempt to emulate their contempt for the Christian themes they are parodying.
Lil Nas X himself has made his association with Satanism very clear to be motivated by his sexual lifestyle. As a practicing homosexual, he regularly communicates hostility towards the Bible for considering anything about him as sinful. The music video that accompanied these satanic shoes was meant to communicate exactly that. He doesn’t like being told that his decisions in life are wrong, and expresses that through Christian imagery like the Garden of Eden, the Forbidden Fruit, Hell, and subjecting himself to a public stoning by a crowd full of people that are all himself. Other sexually explicit aspects of the video aside, he clarified his intention for the video was to communicate the very same sentiment the church of Satan was founded upon. Taking elements of Christianity and mocking it simply for rebellion’s own sake. If there is any positive affirmation in Satanism and Lil Nas X’s practices within it, it would be hedonism. The idea that what feels good is good. The pursuit of pleasure is the ultimate good to be embraced at any cost.
As was stated before, we need to come to an informed and consistent conclusion about this individual’s actions.
- Does the existence of these shoes in any way challenge the claims or character of Jesus Christ? No.
- Does the music video that accompanied these shoes in any way challenge the authority of scripture or the character of God? No.
- Does the behavior of Lil Nas X in any way challenge the foundation and definition of Christianity. No.
While the presence of a pentagram and human blood on a shoe is certainly distasteful, it in no way affects anyone’s life apart from those who proactively choose to make it a part of their own. Those who purchase it will likely fall into one of two camps. They either won’t care about the spiritual elements and just consider it a shoe, or will care more about the individual who produced them then what is actually being produced. If the question is about the shoes, this is the answer. The shoes at the end of the day are just shoes and are as relevant as you choose to make them. They aren’t worth any more of our attention then that.
The real question is what our response should be towards anti-Christian activists like Lil Nas X and the reasons they have for doing so. The answer to this question is equally as simple. Pray for him. He doesn’t know God and shouldn’t be expected to act like it. However, our desire should be our Lord’s. That none should perish and all come to repentance. The reasons why he rejects a relationship with Jesus Christ are irrelevant. In the end, they’re just excuses resulting in the same outcome. Whether Christians have done him great harm or not, Christ hasn’t. Whether he looks up to people who don’t believe in God or not, they won’t be his judge after this life. Whether he values his sexuality more than his spirituality or not, he still needs a Savior. Our job shouldn’t be to demand he stops expressing his rebellion against God through profane shoes and music videos. Our job should be to live consistently with the character of Christ ourselves and pray that the Holy Spirit continues to work on his heart so that he comes to know the God who loves and died for him when we were all sinners.
I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person. For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? But those who are outside God judges. Therefore “put away from yourselves the evil person.”
1 Corinthians 5:9-13 (NKJV)
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