Innocene through Christ

This was for my writing class. I had a lot of fun writing it:

At the 2009 Music Television Awards, something terrible happened, which is not unusual since horrible things have happened at this award show. Taylor Swift became the first female country singer to win a MTV award. Winning the award for her music video, You Belong with Me, she trotted to the stage and began her acceptance speech. Horribly, the rapper, Kayne West jumped on stage, grabbed the microphone, and yelled about how he thought Beyonce’s music video was better. That stirred the media up.. After a year the incident was not forgotten, but dropped. At the 2010 MTV awards, Swift did a spectacular performance. Showing a short clip of the incident at the beginning, she sang her song, ‘Innocent’ from her most recent album, Speak Now. “Who you are is not what you did/You’re still an innocent,” she sang. “Every one of us has messed up too/Minds change like the weather/I hope you remember/Today is never too late to be brand new.”   This story shows us that God turns every mess out for good, even if it’s at the not-so clean MTV awards.

Now compare that to her most recent not-relating-to-love single, ‘Mean.’ At the 52^nd Grammys, Swift and Steveie Nicks sang a duet in which she sang badly off key. The outcome was terrible. Saying that it was amazing how she could walk away with a huge award (which she won later that night) and do an earsplitting performance, the critics wrote many other terrible things. One of the main critics of her performance was Bob Lefsetz who criticized her on his blog. Then, two year later, Swift sang another song at the Grammys, called ‘Mean.’ “You with your words like ice and swords and weapons that you use against me,” she started out. In the chorus, she sings triumphantly, “But you don’t know/ Someday I’ll be living in a big old city and all you’re ever gonna be is mean.” Convinced that the song was about him, he talked about the lyrics on his blog, admitted that he was the leader of the pack of the critics of last year and she said, “I’ll let her win. I’ll give her the publicity she deserves.” I am still unsure he let her win. After surrendering, he complained about her ‘not acting like a woman.’ “She still can’t sing!” he wrote.

That is mean.

Now look at Swift’s lyrics. While predicting his future, she sings, “Washed up and ranting about the same old bitter things/Drunk and going on about how I can’t sing/All you are is mean.”” Is he doing that? Yes. This song makes a point and is very encouraging, but look at the line, “All you are is mean.” When I looked deeper into that, I found out it says, “You’ll never changed.” Now compare that to: “Who you are is not what you did.” These are very different meanings. Which one does she really believes in?

We can never be sure, but we can come to an assuring conclusion: We are innocent through Christ, no matter how many mean things we’ve done.