Reflections on Dissections: S5E14 — “XXX.” pt. 1b
How do we overcome?
< Previous: S5E14 — “XXX.” pt. 1a
This post is a companion to Dissect Podcast Season 5 Episode 14
In the previous post, we discussed the introductory section “XXX.” paying particularly close attention to how Kenny has been conditioned to react with violence and aggression whenever he is placed in the midst of conflict. It is thus no surprise that as the first verse of “XXX.” begins, Kenny is immediately presented with details about a deadly conflict.
Yesterday I got a call like from my dog like 101
Said they killed his only son because of insufficient funds
The first verse of “XXX.” opens with a heart-wrenching narrative in which Kenny’s friend calls to tell Kenny about the death of the friend’s son who was apparently killed by gang bangers who refused to forgive the son’s unpaid debts. This cold-hearted refusal to forgive another’s debts is directly opposed to Jesus’s teachings on the kingdom of God. For instance, when Jesus taught his followers to pray, Jesus told them to say
“Our Father in heaven, may your name be honored, may your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today the bread that we need, and forgive us our debts, as we ourselves have forgiven our debtors.
- Matthew 6:9–12
Along with asking God to forgive the debt we owe to society as a result of our wrongdoings, the prayer also implicitly asserted that this request for God to forgive our debts must be matched by our own willingness to forgive the debts of those who have wronged us. Jesus then makes this connection explicit when he says:
“If you forgive others their faults, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive you your faults.”
- Matthew 6:14–15
According to Jesus forgiving those who have defaulted on their debts is a requirement in order to receive God’s forgiveness. Hence, those who refuse to forgive, refuse God’s forgiveness. The inherent danger in such unforgiveness would later be illustrated in one of Jesus’s parables from Matthew’s Gospel account.
“For this reason, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servents. As he began settling his accounts, a man who owed [seven billion dollars] was brought to him. Because he was not able to repay it, the lord ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, children, and whatever he possessed, and repayment to be made. Then the servent threw himself to the ground before him, saying, ‘Be patient with me, and I will repay you everything.’ The lord had compassion on that servant and released him, and forgave him the debt.
After he went out, that same servant found one of his fellow servants who owed him [twelve thousand dollars]. So he grabbed him by the throat and started to choke him, saying, ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ Then his fellow servant threw himself down and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will repay you.’ But he refused. Instead, he went out and threw him in prison until he repaid the debt.
When his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were very upset and went and told their lord everything that had taken place. Then his lord called the first servant and said to him, ‘Evil servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me! Should you not have shown mercy to your fellow servant, just as I showed it to you?’ And in anger his lord turned him over to the prison guards to torture him until he repaid all he owed. So also my heavenly Father will do to you, if each of you does not forgive your brother from your heart.”
- Matthew 18:23–35
In this parable, Jesus introduces us to a servant who owes an enormous amount of money to his master. In the original text, the amount owed is said to be “10,000 talents”. A talent was a Roman monetary unit that was worth 6,000 denarii. And a denarius was a Roman monetary unit that was one day’s worth of wages for a laborer. To get a sense of how much 10,000 talents are worth in modern-day American dollars, one can assume that the average hourly wage for a laborer is $15 per hour. Assuming an 8-hour workday, 1 denarius would be worth $120. 6 thousand denarii, or 1 talent, would be worth $720 thousand. And 10,000 talents would be worth $7.2 billion dollars, an amount of money so large that as of 2019 only 203 individuals in the world had a net worth which exceeded that figure. Hence, we should conclude that the master forgave the servant of a debt that he would never have been able to pay back.
After establishing the servant as one who has received extraordinary mercy, Jesus goes on to tell about how the servant later demanded to be paid back by another servant who owed him 100 denarii, which based on our earlier assumptions would be worth $12 thousand dollars. However, despite the fact that the master had forgiven the first servant’s $7,200,000,000 debt, that servant refused to forgive the second servant’s $12,000 debt. Instead, the first servant grabbed the second servant by the neck, tried to choke him and then threw him into debtor’s prison to work his way out of debt through manual labor.
When the master found out that the servant who he had forgiven a $7.2 billion debt was heartless enough to throw another servant in prison over a $12 thousand debt, the master became very angry with the first servant and threw him into debtors prison to work his way out of his $7.2 billion debt. At $15 dollars an hour, it would take 226,415 years for the servant to work his way out of his debt, which meant that the servant was now condemned to prison for the rest of his life.
The parable about the unforgiving servant thus establishes the idea that the men who killed the son of Kenny’s friend because of unpaid debts are opposing God’s grace which may ultimately lead them to a cursed existence for the rest of their lives. However, even while Jesus’s teachings about the kingdom of God may lead us to assume that these unforgiving gang bangles are already doomed, Kenny’s lyrics also suggest an awareness that God still wants to offer a new way of life to these men.
In particular, we should notice that Kenny that the men killed his friend’s “only son.” On the surface, this could be just an additional detail to further convey the tragedy of the friend’s loss. However, it is interesting to note that the idea of a father’s “only son” being killed is an important motif within the Bible. The motif begins in Genesis with the iconic story of God testing Abraham by asking him to give his only son, Isaac, as a sacrificial offering. In the end, God didn’t actually make Abraham sacrifice his son but instead provided a spotless ram to take Isaac’s place.
The story of Abraham and his only son this serves as an iconic archetype of God providing a spotless representative to suffer so that others can live. This archetype would then foreshadow the Gospel narrative in which God sent Jesus to suffer so that all those who believe in him can live. This idea is best summarized in the Gospel according to John where the author writes
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
- John 3:16
In this passage, the author of the Gospel account depicts God as a father whose only son was killed. But rather than taking vengeance upon his son’s killers, the father used his son’s death as a means of providing new life to countless people. The radical altruism and patience exhibited by God the Father thus provide a clear contrast to the frantic actions of Kenny’s friend.
He was sobbin’, he was mobbin’, way belligerent and drunk
Talkin’ out his head, philosophin’ on what the Lord had done
In the midst of unimaginable pain, anger and sadness, the friend struggles to make sense of what has happened to his son. He even goes so far as to theorize about how God was the direct cause of his son’s death. Indeed, his confusion about God’s character and God’s role in the death of his son seems to be part of the reason that the friend has called Kenny
He said: “K-Dot, can you pray for me?
It been a fucked up day for me
As we hear the friend asking Kenny, “Can you pray for me?” we are again reminded about the prayer motif that has run throughout the album beginning on the track “ELEMENT.” where Kenny first lamented the fact that nobody was praying for him. This sentiment became the main focus of the following track “FEEL.” Whose second verse ended with Kenny saying
“I feel like the whole world wants me to pray for them, but who the fuck praying for me”
- From “FEEL.”
Here in “XXX.” we know have a concrete example of someone asking Kenny to pray for them. Moreover, the friend goes on to provide a compelling reason for why he chose to call Kenny.
I know that you anointed, show me how to overcome.
As we discussed in the podcast episode, this line is one of the most theologically dense lines on the album. The theology of these lines is anchored in the words “anointed” and “overcome”: two words that have deep implications within the narrative of the gospel.
To begin with, we should note that “anointed” is an adjective used to refer to someone who God has chosen to become the spiritual leader of God’s people. In order to distinguish this person in the eyes of the people, God will typically send someone to perform a ritual in which oil is spread on the chosen leader’s body to symbolize how God’s Spirit has come upon the person to empower them to lead God’s people. The iconic example of such an anointing happened when God sent a prophet named Samuel to anoint a young boy named David to become the king of Israel.
“Now the LORD said to Samuel, ‘Fill your horn with oil and go; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have selected a king for Myself among his sons.’So Samuel did what the LORD said, and came to Bethlehem. Thus Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel.
But Samuel said to Jesse, ‘The LORD has not chosen these.’
And Samuel said to Jesse, ‘Are these all the children?’
And Jesse said, ‘There remains yet the youngest, and behold, he is tending the sheep.’
Then Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.”
So he sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, with beautiful eyes and a handsome appearance. And the LORD said, “Arise, anoint him; for this is he.”
Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers; and the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon David from that day forward.”
- 1 Samuel 16:1, 4, 10–13
Based on this passage, David became the archetype of a king who would bring peace and justice to Israel after being anointed and subsequently experiencing God’s Spirit resting upon him. Indeed, centuries after David’s reign as the Israelites began to return from their captivity to the Babylonian Empire, a new generation of prophets declared that one day God would anoint one of David’s descendants to reestablish God’s kingdom. For instance, when the writers of the final section of the Book of Isaiah described the restoration of Israel after the return from Babylonian exile, they wrote from the perspective of a chosen leader who says.
“The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
Because the LORD has anointed me
To bring good news to the afflicted;
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to captives
And freedom to prisoners;
to proclaim the favorable year of the LORD”- Isaiah 61:1
Much like David in 1 Samuel 16, this passage describes God’s chosen leader as someone upon whom God has placed his anointing and his spirit. It is also important to note that the Hebrew word that is translated as “anointed” here in Isaiah is the verb “mašaḥ.” When used as a noun to describe the “anointed one”, the word becomes “mašíaḥ” (מָשִׁיחַ) which is where we get the English rendering, Messiah.
By the time period on which the New Testament took place, the word Messiah was typically used by Israelites to refer to the man who they believed would one day defeat the Romans, free the Israelites from their oppressive occupation and establish an Israelite kingdom that would last for all eternity.
Given all of this historical context, it is no coincidence that in Luke’s gospel account when Jesus began his public ministry, he first went to a synagogue on the day that the book of Isaiah was being read.
“And Jesus came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read. And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book and found the place where it was written,
‘The Spirit of the LORD is upon me,
Because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives,
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set free those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the favorable year of the LORD.’And Jesus closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’”
- Luke 4:16–21
Here Jesus clearly identified himself as the anointed leader who was foretold in the book of Isaiah. It is also important to note that since the New Testament was written in Greek the word that is used to refer to Jesus as the “anointed one” is the Greek word “Christos” (Χριστός ) and “Christos” is where we get the English rendering, Christ. Thus, contrary to what many modern people might assume, Christ is not Jesus’s last name, rather it is a title that identifies Jesus as the “anointed one” who will lead God’s people.
By extension we should also recognize that the term Christian most literally means “belonging to the anointed one” i.e. “belonging to Christ.” Hence, when Kenny’s friend says “I know that you’re anointed,” the friend is acknowledging Kenny’s unique role as as a leader. At the same time, the friend is effectively highlighting the fact that, like all Christians, Kenny belongs to Jesus and is thus meant to act and speak in accordance to Jesus’s will.
Give that Kenny is so closely associated with a Messiah whose kingdom will never end, Kenny would seem to be the perfect person to show his friend how to overcome. indeed the choice of the word “overcome” seems to be a very deliberate choice because the word “overcome” is used in very pivotal moments throughout the New Testament, particularly in the writings of John the Evangelist.
The first instance of the word being used in John’s writing occurs when Jesus is giving his final speech to his disciples just before his arrest on Good Friday. In that speech, Jesus told his disciple that he would soon go away and leave them to face intense persecution. At the same time, he also said that he would send the Spirit of God to comfort the disciples. He then ended his speech by saying:
“I have told you these things so that in me you may experience peace. In the world you experience oppression but be encouraged — I have overcome the world.”
- John 16:33
Here Jesus declared that he had already overcome the world despite the fact that he was about to be arrested, convicted, and executed. Given that following his own teachings about love and forgiveness led directly to his death, we may then wonder in what sense did Jesus overcome the world?
The gospel according to John goes on to tell the story of Jesus’s death resurrection but it doesn’t clearly identify the point at which Jesus overcame. Additionally, the gospel account never explains how those who belong to Jesus can live overcome in their own lives. However, the motif of overcoming gets developed significantly in The Revelation, which is also attributed to John the Evangelist and happens to be the final book in the New Testament.
In the opening section of The Revelation, John sees a vision in which Jesus appears and dictates seven short letters addressed to seven different churches located in seven different cities in what is now modern-day Turkey.
In each letter, Jesus will praise some members of the church for their faithfulness in the midst of persecution and also warn other members of the church about the negative consequences they will experience if they continue in their unfaithfulness. Each short letter then ends with Jesus promising to reward those who overcome.
For instance, to the church in Ephesus Jesus declares:
“To the one who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life which is in the Paradise of God.’”
- Revelation 2:7
To the church in Smyrna, Jesus declares:
“The one who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death.’”
- Revelation 2:11
To the church in Pergamum, Jesus declares:
“To the one who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows except the one who receives it.’”
- Revelation 2:17
To the church in Thyatira, Jesus declares.
“The one who overcomes, and who keeps My deeds until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations and I will give the morning star.”
- Revelation 2:26–28
To the church in Sardis, Jesus declares:
“The one who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.”
- Revelation 3:5
To the church in Philadelphia, Jesus declares:
“The one who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he will not go out from it anymore; and I will write on him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God, and My new name.”
- Revelation 3:12
To the church in Laodicea, Jesus declares:
“He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.”
- Revelation 3:21
As one can see, Jesus promised transcendent rewards to those who strove to overcome including, eating from the tree of life in the Garden of Eden, eternity with God, heavenly food, a new identity, divine authority, purified clothing, citizenship in heaven, inclusion in God’s temple. This list of rewards built up toward the final reward of sitting on Jesus’s throne which effectively meant that these followers could join Jesus as anointed kings and queens. Here Jesus clearly connects the Christian’s act of overcoming to Christ’s own act of overcoming, which was first established in the gospel according to John.
Still nowhere in any of these seven letters does Jesus explain how his followers are meant to overcome. Instead, the letters give way to a much longer and more vivid vision in which John sees numerous cataclysmic events with symbolic imagery that reveals the cosmic struggle between the spiritual forces of good and evil. These cataclysmic events build into a miniature climax in which a mysterious woman and her child are attacked by an ominous dragon.
“A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; and she was with child; and she cried out, being in labor and in pain to give birth.
Then another sign appeared in heaven: and behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads were seven diadems. And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth.
And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her child. And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron; and her child was caught up to God and to His throne. Then the woman fled into the wilderness where she had a place prepared by God.”
- Revelation 12:3–6
The first thing that we should note here is that in Greek the word drakon and the corresponding English word “dragon” were originally used to refer to any huge serpent. Hence, this scene featuring a woman and her offspring facing hostility from a serpent seems to be an intentional reference to a key moment from the Garden of Eden narrative, when God cursed the serpent after the serpent convinced the woman to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
“The LORD God said to the serpent,
‘Because you have done this,
Cursed are you more than all cattle,
And more than every beast of the field;
On your belly you will go,
And dust you will eat
All the days of your life;
And I will put hostility
Between you and the woman,
And between your offspring and her offspring;
He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel.’”- Genesis 3:14–15
This pivotal passage from the opening story in the first book of the Bible effectively set the expectation that the main conflict of the entire biblical narrative would only find resolution after a child of a woman stomps on the head of the serpent. That climactic moment seems to have arrived in the final book of the Bible. In case we missed this implicit connection between the dragon in John’s vision and the serpent in the Garden of Eden narrative, John goes on to make the connection explicit.
“And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. The dragon and his angels waged war, and they were not strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called Diabolus and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.”
- Revelation 12:7–9
In this passage, John describes how the dragon and his angels fought a war against God’s angels led by an angel named Michael. The fact that the dragon is fighting with angels suggests that the dragon is in reality a spiritual force rather than simply an earthly creature. Indeed, after the dragon is thrown down to earth, John reveals the dragon’s true identity by saying that the dragon is “the serpent of old” — referring to the serpent in the Garden of Eden, the Diabolus, or Devil, which is a Greek title that means “false accuser”, and also Satan, which is the Hebrew title that means “accuser.” This image of the “false accuser” being overcome leads directly to one of the most pivotal statements in The Revelation.
“Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, ‘Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers and sisters has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night. And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives so much that they were afraid to die.’”
- Revelation 12:10–11
Here a voice from heaven reveals that Jesus brothers and sisters (i.e those who have chosen to follow Jesus and become children of God) have overcome. Most notably, the voice finally explains how Jesus’s followers overcome: by the blood of the Lamb representing Jesus’s sacrificial love, the words they spoke to testify about Jesus, and their willingness to follow Jesus’s example of sacrificial love and forgiveness even if it led to their own deaths.
Of course, the idea that humans are meant to overcome spiritual evil though humility and forgiveness has already been firmly established throughout DAMN. Most notably, the track “PRIDE.” included a verse where Kenny rapped
The hurt becomes repetition, the love almost lost that
Sick venom in men and women overcome with pride
A perfect world is never perfect, only filled with lies
Those lines connect the loss of love to repeated patterns of hurting others. Those lines connected the idea of overcoming with the idea that the world is imperfect, similar to when Jesus said “I have overcome the world.” And in the most compelling connection, those lines made reference to men and women who faced hostility from a venomous serpent, just like the serpent from the Garden of Eden and John’s Revelation.
Given all of these connections and the fact that Kenny a prophet who has been anointed with God’s Spirit, it seems reasonable to assume that Kenny knows that the only way to overcome is through humility, forgiveness, and love. At the same time, the narrative of DAMN. has consistently depicted Kung Fu Kenny as a rebellious prophet who struggles to answer God’s call. Now that Kenny has accepted a call from his friend, will Kenny serve as God’s vessel by pointing to Jesus’s example of overcoming the world? Or will Kung Fu Kenny be overcome by the destructive patterns of thought that seek to draw him back into friendship with the world? We’ll discuss Kenny’s response in the next post.
Resources:
- “Overview: Isaiah 40–46” video by the Bible Project
- “Overview: Luke 1–9” video by the Bible Project
- “Overview: John 13–21” video by the Bible Project
- “Overview: Revelation Ch. 1–11” video by the Bible Project
- “Overview: Revelation Ch. 12–22” video by the Bible Project
- “Messiah” video by the Bible Project
