Despacito, and how as a youth pastor I am never up on the trends, but did love how an article revealed the transcendent side of this pop song

Jesse Bolinder
Aug 8, 2017 · 4 min read
Photo by Richard Ha, https://www.flickr.com/photos/richardha101/31620169354/in/photostream/

How’s that for a post title?

As a youth leader, I tend to feel like I’m playing catch up on what’s cool, hip, trending. I give it my best shot most days, but I often hear from late night talk hosts comments like, “Unless you’ve been living under a rock…(fill in the blank)” and then think, “Crap, I’m supposed to know these things first. I work with youth. Never-the-less, sometimes I admit my failure to stay current, other times I just fake it, and then google it later, acting all along like I know what’s going on.

This summer, this happened with Despacito.

And then, I pull it up at work, you know, so I can know what “kids these days” are watching and listening to and think, “Is this safe for work?”

But, here’s the important thing, whether it appears safe for work or not, it’s being watched, and I couldn’t help but think, people love this.

That’s when I discovered this great article about Despacito on New York Time Opinion.

Lines like this jumped out at me:

…the song’s success does highlight a side of humanity that, these days, often seems overshadowed by uglier tendencies. We know that humans can be tribal, that we quickly organize ourselves into in-groups and out-groups, that we can treat those out-groups cruelly and even savagely. These tendencies probably predate our being human. Even groups of chimpanzees wage war against one another.

But we have this other side that’s curious, that doesn’t cringe from difference so much as find inspiration in it. A transcendent side that takes joy in bringing together disparate parts, in creation, in play.

Here’s a thought. As much as our we can all slip into our natural tribal tendencies, our hearts, minds, and souls, that “other side” calls out from within saying, “No, there is something more, something better, something bigger, richer, better.”

And, it is prceisely that “transcendent side” that knows there is a joy, and a peace, and a goodness that can only be found in transcending our tribal tendencies.

Incidentally, this is a central, and one of the most, if not the most important themes running throughout all of the Christian Scriptures. Unfortunately, this truth has been lost or forgotten or (for lack of a better word) trumped. Christianity, in a sense, has been co-opted, and sucumbed somehow to a “cranky nativism” and become, instead, attached to things like political agena, patiotism, and moralism.

But, as this song taps into, there is a Transendent side, a deep truth, present in the center and all the way through the story of Christianity, that is the real hope and blessing of humanity. And it found when one tribe doesn’t seek to crush all other tribes and reign supreme enforcing it’s power over all others, but instead the Scriptures paint a picture and tell a story of crossing tribal boundaries, and what happens when one tribe extends blessing to all other tribes and nations.

When Abraham, the great patriarch of all three Abrahamic religions, enters the story, he is given one of the most stunning promises, formally a Covenant from Yahweh:

“I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you;
I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

What happened here is instead of this God saying, “I will be on your side, and I will send you out to crush all the other nations, and you will be great, and you will give glory to me when I do this for you.” This God says, “I will bless you, so that you can be a blessing. So that all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

This was a very new idea, and is still not our human tendency. As the article points out, our tendency is tribal, but a Transcendent Side has promised that there is great joy in extending blessing to all peoples on earth, and to “bringing together disparate parts, in creation, in play.”

This is good news, and, this Good News, also found woven throughout the pop song Despicito, is what has actually “won the day.”

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