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I wonder: If we open our eyes, what truth might we see around us? What truth is being told by unexpected voices in unexpected places?

My Spotify playlists are organized by the seasons of the church calendar. Thereā€™s Lent, Advent, Epiphany, and Pentecost. My playlist ā€œCommon Timeā€ happens to be almost exclusively made up of female artists. Theyā€™re mostly pop stars with something to say to the patriarchy: Misterwives, Solange, and Kesha.

I grew up with Kesha. I came of age to Kesha. My basketball team in high school would warm up to ā€œTik Tok,ā€ singing proudly that we ā€œbrush our teeth with a bottle of Jackā€ without truly understanding what that meant.

About a year ago, Kesha released her album Rainbow, her first music since I was a teenager. When I heard the inaugural single of the album, ā€œPraying,ā€ for the first time, I felt as if I had been gut-punched (in the best way). I pulled up the music video on YouTube and watched it on my small iPhone screen probably 16 times in a row, screenshotting the scenes that felt especially significant and beautiful.

Vulnerable piano ballads are not usually groundbreaking. Many pop stars have written them. Many pop stars have performed them. But for an artist I knew only for her glittery, superficial club bangers to open up about meaningful topics and painā€”this felt profound.

One of the screenshots I took from the ā€œPrayingā€ video freezes Kesha standing on a giant, colorfully painted rock formation. Bright paint spells the words ā€œGod is loveā€ in enormous letters behind her, and you can see Kesha walking upward to the word ā€œGod.ā€

I should say here that Keshaā€™s spirituality, in the context of mainstream Christianity, is unorthodox. Sheā€™s a bisexual, platinum-selling pop star recovering from sexual and emotional abuse and an eating disorder, so Iā€™d guess her life experience itself is somewhat unorthodox. So when I watched this video, I was shocked to see ā€œGod is loveā€ā€”a core Christian truthā€”blatantly proclaimed in the video of a song on the Billboard Top 100.

Perhaps I shouldnā€™t have been shocked. Cultureā€”all aspects of itā€”has been proclaiming truths by tucking them into song, literature, and theater for a long time. In Acts 17, Paul quotes pagan poets to the Athenians (the specific line was ā€œWe are Godā€™s offspringā€), showing that their religiosity was authentic but just needed guidance. The Athenians could name and identify truths; they just needed to root them in the narrative of the God who became flesh.

So I wonder: If we open our eyes, what truth might we see around us? What truth is being told by unexpected voices in unexpected places? Maybe a pop star whose songs are popular in clubs understands who God is better than we do. Maybe the pizza delivery guy has something for us to learn in our two-minute interaction with him. Maybe the men and women behind the pulpit donā€™t have a monopoly on proclaiming hope and grace. And maybe bisexual, platinum-selling pop stars recovering from sexual and emotional abuse and an eating disorder are actually the perfect people for the job.

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