I must be getting old.
Because more and more our society surprises me. And not in a good way.
The other night one of the anchors at the station that I work at came in with her I-Pod and a wide-eyed expression.
“Have you heard the song ‘Drunk in Love’ from Beyonce yet?” she asked me. No, I hadn’t. In fact, I tend to be horrible with song names, especially when 95 percent of mainstream music all sounds the same anyway.
“Well, don’t!” she warned before I could say anything. “It’s the most explicit song I’ve ever heard. And that’s saying something.”
Well, here’s something to learn about me. If you tell me not to do something, I’m like a toddler with a hot stove. I’ll touch it. And then I’ll regret it within seconds. So, like clockwork, I punched the song title into youtube and could barely get through the entire video–complete with lyrics–before I exited out of the tab and realized my jaw had gone slack. I knew mainstream culture was headed down an ugly path with sexual innuendos and half-naked advertisements and rappers going off about drugs and clubs and trigger-happy gangs. But still, time and again, the media and society prove to me that, oh just you wait–it can and WILL get so much worse.
I decided I’d never listen to that song again. Until I heard it tonight after stepping into a store on my break to look around and I almost got whacked in the face with the glass door. The kid ahead of me, no older than seventeen, let it fall behind him even though I entered right after him and his blond girlfriend. The couple held a phone between the two of them that played that darn song again and as I walked slowly through the racks and aisles I could hear them chattering over the music and making a mess out of the spring dress aisle. They laughed and more than once I overheard him call her a name no woman should ever be called. When they were in view I could tell she was getting annoyed with him and pushed him a couple times when he touched her from behind and told her she was acting dumb. Drunk in love.
The scene played out perfectly to the music I think.
And somewhere, underneath the annoyance that had built up since getting hit by the door he failed to hold open, I felt a hint of sadness that our kids, some as young as five and others as old as me, are being taught what love is by the lyrics of songs like these. They’re being shown what love is in movie theaters and on billboards and reality TV.
And the music of the world is loud.
Chivalry slowly dies with each generation as ladies forget how to be ladies and as gentleman are no longer instructed to open the door. Girls are being instructed by these lyrics to raise the hemlines of skirts and put up with being used and slobbered over like a steak because THAT is how you get love. Boys are being told to take control, to seek after sex whenever it’s wanted, and to mistreat their mothers, their girlfriends, and their future wives. Girls are subtly told to look up to the women who are photoshopped on magazines and who belt out sassy tunes about “giving it all up” while boys are told girls SHOULD look that way…and should give it up.
Do I sound old-fashioned? If the answer you came up with is yes, than that proves to me how far we’ve fallen. I don’t know why respecting ourselves and striving for love that respects and strengthens and empowers us has become a vintage antique on a dusty shelf.
Even Heavenly Father knew this time would come, though. It’s something we all have to prepare for. In Isaiah 5:20 it says, “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.”
Bitter, drunk love. I couldn’t help but watch these teenagers chat alongside those lyrics as I browsed the store, wondering about the voice of his mother or the advice of her father. Perhaps they were taught everything right and the world just became too loud. Perhaps they were taught only by the world and no one else. Or maybe things have become so perverted, so mangled and distorted–that there’s nothing out of the ordinary with singing along to, “Can’t keep your eyes off my *****, daddy. Drunk in love, I want you.”
I’m not a mother yet and I can’t imagine the difficulties of raising a child in a world that no longer whispers, but screams. I don’t know everything there is to know about child rearing or advising or guiding and I’m not here to say that I do. But I do know that Satan is attacking everything that Heavenly Father put into place. Family. Marriage. Love. Kindness.
And I know that the only way to not be for it is to be against it. Dress against it. Listen against it. Speak against it. Teach your kids against it. Walk against it.
Because we’re falling, and fast. Yes, there’s good in the world. Of course there is. But we still have far to go as society is in rapid decline within the media and within our culture.
There should be more boys opening doors. There should be more girls demanding respect by what they say and wear and do. There should be more role models to look towards other than pop stars in bikinis and actors with three women on their arms. There should be more love–the real kind of love that is slowly becoming old-fashioned and out-of-date.
There’s no such thing as being “drunk in love” like the song states. There’s no such thing as love that comes from one-night stands or “smoking all night” or giving in to something that’s so plainly wrong. There’s no such thing as happiness through defilement.
The scary thing is– the world and all things that tear holes in the fabric of truth know that those messages aren’t real. But it wants you to be so “drunk” that you forget it..
And it wants our kids to never learn it.
all our lemmony things 