Beyonce performs at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, 13 Feb. 2017.
Far too many Christians are becoming desensitized to the blatant paganism that’s being promoted in culture, as evidenced by Beyoncé’s display at the Grammy’s Sunday where she dressed and performed as Roman, Hindu, and African goddesses.
Beyoncé’s performance received high praise from many on social media and entertainment commentators who hailed the 10-minute performance as a visual delight while others found it strange, particularly given the overt fertility rituals she reenacted. The Washington Post called Beyoncé’s time on stage “stunning” and suggested that what “those unfamiliar with her Grammy-nominated album Lemonade may have missed was that the gold and glitz on display were serving a greater purpose. … Beyoncé was teaching.”
But according to Charlie Self, a professor at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary at Evangel University in Springfield, Missouri, Beyoncé’s performance represents a “triumph of visual captivity over the hearing of the Word of the Lord,” he said in an interview with The Christian Post on Wednesday.
“This was the great struggle for a thousand years of Israel’s history,” Self explained.
“The great command was ‘Hear, O Israel.’ Fundamentally, the LORD God was to be heard, believed and obeyed, and in contrast to the pagan nations around Israel who were captive to visual images as well as nature deities.”
Sunday’s Grammy’s, he said, were but a snapshot of an ongoing three-fold cosmological struggle: idolatry, immorality, and injustice.
“A problem emerges the moment you change your deity,” Self said. Tthis was a problem of the [Old Testament] prophets and a problem seen in Romans 1 nature replaces the God who created nature.”
“And the minute you change your deity you change your morality. Now what you have is a set of activities focused on fertility, focused on the forces of nature. But what makes today’s paganism worse is that at least in ancient times they were for good crops and babies. Now, we kill the babies and have replaced intimacy with God with personal and sexual pleasure.”
Such an observation was not lost on Christian pro-life leaders like Obianuju Ekeocha, founder of Culture of Life Africa, who tweeted Sunday: “So the #beyonceperformance had Beyoncé ‘channeling’ a goddess, trying to look like BVM & reenacting Last Supper. This was a Pagan performance.”
So the #beyonceperformance had Beyoncé “channeling”a goddess, trying to look like BVM & reenacting Last Supper.
This was a Pagan performance pic.twitter.com/3GltBtZh4O— Obianuju Ekeocha (@obianuju) February 13, 2017
After embracing idolatry through swapping out the deity and substituting another morality, injustice results.
Self added: “You begin to change in your relationship toward others. And this is what we are watching in the polarization of our society. What we are watching are people willing to violate universal standards of conscience in their own interests, for the collective, for nature, for their idols.”
Click here to read more.
SOURCE: The Christian Post
Brandon Showalter
BCNN1 WP 