Reflections on Dissections: S5E12 — “LUST.”
Why God’s Spirit is the only thing that can satisfy our thirst
In our last post, we discussed how Kung Fu Kenny used the track “HUMBLE.” to deliver a distorted version of God’s message. In particular, we heard Kenny exalting himself while hypocritically telling others to sit down and be humble. In the end, Kenny’s words revealed that he had reverted to his old way of thinking, particularly his old belief that being able to kill another black male makes him “the realest nigga.” In doing so, Kenny rejected the “real life” of being filled with God’s Spirit. He instead chose to fill his life with the pursuit of sex, money and murder. However, as “HUMBLE.” ends and “LUST.” begins it soon becomes clear that Kenny’s pursuits have left him unsatisfied.
I need some water
In this opening line of “LUST.”, Kenny reveals that he is thirsty. This statement is almost certainly a reference back to “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst” on good kid, m.A.A.d. city. Within the narrative of the album, “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst” takes place after one of Kendrick’s friends was shot to death. As Kendrick and his remaining friends debated hunting down their enemies, Kendrick finally came to the end of himself and recognized the he and his friends were “dying of thirst.”
Tired of runnin’, tired of huntin’
My own kind but retirin’ nothin’
Tires are steady screechin’, the driver is rubbin’
Hands on the wheel, who said we wasn’t
Dyin’ of thirst, dyin’ of thirst, dyin’ of thirst?- From “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst”
By the end of that musical section, Kendrick came to the conclusion that his only hope was to confess his hopeless condition and immerse himself in water
The truth will set you free, so to me be completely honest
You dyin’ of thirst, you dyin’ of thirst
So hop in that water, and pray that it works.- From “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst”
After experiencing the destructive thirst which came from pursuing evil, the verses of “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst” ended with Kendrick making a clear reference to the Christian ritual of water baptism as a means for receiving new life.
As we discussed, in the first podcast episode of the season and in the podcast episode for “LUST.”, the “dying of thirst” concept and the associations with water baptism are core biblical motifs that run from the Old Testament into the New Testament. The motif makes a notable appearance in the earliest book of prophetic poetry in the Bible written by a prophet named Amos. Amos prophesied against the Northern Kingdom of Israel during a time in which Israelite society was plagued by injustice, especially against the poor. The king and religious leaders of Israel refused to listen to Amos’s critique. This rejection led Amos to deliver the following prophecy.
The time is surely coming, says the Lord GOD , when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the LORD , but they shall not find it. In that day the beautiful young women and the young men shall faint for thirst.
Amos 8:11–13
According to Amos, because the Israelites refused to listen to God’s word, God would one day send a drought of hearing God’s word. This drought would cause the Israelites to faint of thirst while they desperately searched for fulfillment. The implication here is that God’s word is the only source of water that will quench the deepest thirst of humanity.
This connection between God’s word and life-sustaining water seems to have been a direct influence for John, the author of the fourth Gospel account. This influence is seen at the very beginning of John’s Gospel account where John introduced Jesus by saying:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.
- John 1:1,14
In this poetic introduction to his Gospel account, John identifies Jesus as the “Word of God”, the very thing that Amos said people needed to hear in order to be sustained and avoid fainting of thirst. The connection between water and Jesus as the Word of God would then become explicitly clear in the fourth chapter of John’s Gospel account when Jesus met a woman at a well and asked her to give him a drink of water. The woman was surprised that Jesus asked for a drink of water because those of her ethnic group were sworn enemies of Jesus’s ethnic group. Her surprise then led to the following interaction.
Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”
She said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water?
Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
- John 4:10–14
According to John’s account, Jesus, the Word of God, is the one who is able to provide “living water” to humans so that they will never die of thirst. At this point in the Gospel account, the author does not fully explain what exactly this “living water” is. However, a few chapters later, the author recounts a story in which Jesus arrived at Jerusalem and spoke to the people there saying:
If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. Just as the scripture says, ‘From within him will flow rivers of living water.’” (Now he said this about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were going to receive)
- John 7:38–39
In this passage, after Jesus again offers “living water” to those around him, the author adds a parenthetical statement that explains that “living water” refers to the Spirit of God which Jesus intended to give to those who believed in him. Fittingly, receiving the Spirit of God is exactly what the unnamed woman talked about after she saw Kendrick and his friends contemplating taking revenge during “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst.”
Why are you so angry?
See, you young men are dying of thirst
Do you know what that means?
That means you need water, holy water
You need to be baptized, with the spirit of the Lord
Do you want to receive God as your personal savior?- from “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst.”
The unnamed woman asserted that in order for Kendrick to overcome his destructive emotions and satisfy his deepest thirst, he would need to be baptized in God’s Spirit. The word baptism comes from the Greek word baptízō which meant “to immerse.” Hence, just like the physical bodies of new believers are immersed into water, so too the minds of new believers are meant to be immersed in the thoughts and feelings that come from God’s Spirit. This parallelism between baptizing the body in water and baptizing the mind in God’s Spirit was also highlighted by John the Baptist who testified about Jesus by saying
“I baptized you with water; but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
- Mark 1:8
Of course, as we’ve seen throughout DAMN. and most recently in the previous track “HUMBLE.”, Kung Fu Kenny has chosen to reject God’s Spirit and immerse himself in the pursuit of sex, money and murder. By rejecting God’s Spirit, Kenny has rejected living water. By saying “I need some water”, Kenny is unconsciously declaring his need for God’s Spirit to restore him to life and prevent him from dying of thirst. However, because he has not fully woken up to the reality of his thirst, Kenny initially seems uninterested in changing his patterns of thought.
Somethin’ came over me
Way too hot to simmer down might as well overheat
Here Kenny seems resigned to his thirst. Rather than seeking out living water, Kenny has decided that he will just allow himself to overheat. At the same time, Kenny’s description of his environment as hot and inescapable, maybe be yet another reference back to “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst”, particularly the lines:
Hell is hot, fire is proven
To burn for eternity- from “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst”
Hell, is the English name that is often used to refer to the Valley of Hinnom. Within the Old Testament, the Valley of Hinnom was a valley outside of Jerusalem where the kings of Jerusalem went to burn their own children as human sacrifices to idols from other nations.
It was this practice of child sacrifice that became the last straw in Israel's collective rebellion. In response, God allowed Jerusalem to be conquered by the Babylonian Empire. At the same time, Jeremiah prophesied that the Valley of Hinnom would be a cursed valley of death and destruction. Over the centuries, the image of the Valley of Hinnom grew to represent how all those who practiced wickedness and injustice would one day be destroyed by the same fate that to which they had subjected others.
The fact that Kenny is already experiencing inescapable heat, suggests that he has entered something like the Valley of Hinnom. As evidenced by the first verse of “LUST.”, King Kenny has become someone who is leading his own people to death and destruction in service to the idols of sex, money and murder. As a result, Kenny is experiencing hell on earth. Kenny is stuck in an endless cycle of futility and mental anguish — a cycle that Kenny is only able to break out of when wakes up to the realization that he and everyone along with him are under the control of lust.
Revertin’ back to our daily programs, stuck in our ways
Lust
Kenny’s realization that he is being controlled by lust leads directly to the outro in which Kenny uses a litany to meditate on how lust has overtaken his life lately. This litany builds until the final line where Kenny says
Lately, in James 4:4 says
Friend of the world is enemy of the Lord
Here Kenny makes a direct reference to a passage from the New Testament Book of Janes. This book was written by a man named James who was Jesus’s brother and the leader of the Church in Jerusalem, the very first church community in the world. James led the church in the decades after Jesus’s death and resurrection, which happened to be a time of tremendous upheaval in Jerusalem. There were severe famines throughout the land which left many families desperate. The heavy taxation by the Roman Empire added further pressure upon those living in Jerusalem. Various members of the church in Jerusalem were tempted to join one of the numerous militia movements which sought to use violence to fight against taxes and ultimately overthrow the Romans.
It is in this environment that James wrote to his church. Interestingly, James refrained from criticizing the Romans. Instead, James questioned what was motivating his people to turn toward violence.
What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is it not from your desire for pleasures which wage war in your members? You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
- James 4:1–3
Much like Kenny at the end of the last verse of “LUST.”, James came to the conclusion that his people were under the control of lust. Their lust for material and bodily pleasures was causing them to fight against others even to the point of murder. In doing so, these members of the Church had not remained faithful to the way of weakness that Jesus taught his followers. This lack of faithfulness is precisely what James was referring to in James 4:4 when he wrote:
You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
- James 4:4
Just like Kenny stated at the end of the outro, James claimed that those who choose to align themselves with the imperfect world are making themselves enemies of God. Moreover, those who are enemies of God are no longer able to receive God’s Spirit — the living water that is meant to quench their deepest thirsts and desires. To remind his people that God wants to give them the thing that they most desperately need, James goes on to say:
Do you think that the Scripture means nothing when it says: “He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us”? But He gives a greater grace. Therefore the Scripture says, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
- James 4:5–6
Here, James refers to passages from the Old Testament to highlight the fact that God wants to give his Spirit to us. However, such grace is only afforded to those who are humble. In contrast, those who are proud will invariably join the world in rising up until God opposes their injustice and humbles them. Given how futile it is to oppose God, James ends this section by saying:
Therefore, submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.
- James 4:7–10
Here, James asserts that fighting against human enemies should not be the focus of those who follow Jesus. Rather, followers should focus on resisting the spiritual forces of evil which seek to overcome humans with lust and pride. Much like Paul’s letter to the Philippian church that we discussed in the previous post, James’s core exhortation is for followers of Jesus to humble themselves and trust that God will exalt them just like God exalted Jesus after Jesus obeyed God and humbled himself to the point of death.
The fact that Kenny is quoting a passage from James which specifically addresses violence, lust, pride and the need for humility suggests that Kenny has had a sudden change of heart from what we saw throughout “HUMBLE.” and the verses of “LUST.” In many ways, this change of heart mirrors the one that we see in the people of Nineveh after they heard Jonah’s preaching.
Surprisingly, even though Jonah seemed to have intentionally omitted any mention of God or the possibility of forgiveness, the people of Nineveh all stopped what they were doing and began to pray for God to have mercy. In the most ironic twist, when the king of Nineveh heard Jonah’s message he got off of his throne and sat down in the dust as a sign of humility. The king of Nineveh then issued an edict which decreed that everyone in Nineveh must restrain their appetites by fasting from food and water while praying to God. Moreover, the king of Nineveh decreed that everyone must stop all acts of violence and turn away from all wickedness.
Here at the end of “LUST.”, Kenny now resembles the king of Nineveh as he suddenly humbles himself and calls all of us to do the same. Given that we have already established a dichotomy between love and pride, we should also note that Kenny’s decision to reject pride has now enabled him to love. This movement from pride to love is something we’ll explore as we discuss the next track, “LOVE.”
Resources:
- “Overview: John Ch. 1–12” by The Bible Project
- “Overview: James” by The Bible Project
