Taylor Swift as a Sign of the Times

I knew she was trouble...

Arguably the biggest star on the planet has grabbed the spotlight yet again with her latest album, and it’s a perfect encapsulation of our cultural moment.

Taylor Swift, the girl who rose to fame for twangy, puppy love pop songs and breakup ballads is no more, having been overtaken by a new, politically vocal, embittered feminist, culture warrior persona.

Though in her early days she uttered the occasional swear word, and has long been unconcerned with modesty, most of her content could be taken as unnoteworthy from a moral standpoint. Just a steady stream of mildly catchy radio hits.

But then, something changed.

Criticized for not speaking out against Donald Trump in 2016, she entered the political fray in 2018 and has become an advocate for LGBT issues and abortion rights and endorsed Joe Biden in 2020. Around the same time, she made the career move of beginning to employ more profanity, sexual innuendos, and social commentary in her music. 2019’s “You Need to Calm Down,” an anthem shouting down anti-LGBT voices, stands out in particular.

Fast forward to her latest album. Plenty of others have pointed to the blasphemy in the lyrics, so I’ll lean on Shane Pruitt’s analysis here:

That’s beyond the pale, and she knows exactly what she’s doing. But there’s something much bigger at play here than a pop star’s nose-thumbing toward God.

Here’s why Swift perfectly represents the cultural moment we find ourselves in.

Why did she have to change? Couldn’t she have stayed out of social issues and just kept churning out bland bubblegum pop?

What we’re seeing is the result of a culture in a dead sprint to the finish line to determine what our basis of truth and morality is going to be. When a culture already has a foundation for truth, this kind of posturing isn’t necessary.

But when a culture is in a tug-of-war between one value set and another, every microphone represents an opportunity to cast a vote. You can’t have entertainment options free of political and social commentary because they are all campaign pieces, propaganda telling you that the world’s way is best.

For this reason, neutral ground is disappearing. Despite a widely held desire to cling to it, the age of tolerance and religious neutrality was always just a layover in between systems. And the proof is everywhere you look.

Notice how you can’t watch a sporting event without a million gambling ads sprinkled in among the lascivious ads for alcohol and previews for lewd tv shows and gory movies. Notice how the family movie and the family sitcom have all but disappeared as options.

Even Bluey, what had been the most wholesome, pro-family tv program in decades, couldn’t help but introduce gay characters—to a show pointed at 5 year olds, mind you.

No, all of this shouldn’t surprise us, but neither should the seeming inevitability of it desensitize us to its ugliness.

What it means

People have already jumped to their metaphorical feet to pose (and mock) the question, “Is it a sin to listen to Taylor Swift?” As I’ve said, this article isn’t about Swift. However, it is about the spirit that drives one to ask such a question.

The Bible is fairly obvious about what is and is not a stone-cold sin, and to be honest, that list isn’t as long and exhaustive as we might sometimes want it to be. This tells us that God expects us to use discernment. That’s what Christian maturity looks like—knowing the “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots,” yes, but also knowing the spirit of the age and the principles that help us know where to stand.

Yet, in the midst of this headlong rush toward the cliff, many Christians insist nothing of the sort is happening and all of this irrelevant.

They see it all as harmless and have no qualms about consuming content that wages war on Christian values. “You can’t tell me it’s a sin, so that settles it!”

Others insist that these things are all a personal choice and we shouldn’t really step on anyone’s sacred individual liberty by cautioning against such content. And, as always, we should never, ever suggest that one choice might be preferable to another.

Discernment is realizing that it’s not a fence that they’re straddling—it’s a fissure, one growing wider by the day.

Lot remained in Sodom, which proved to be a terribly foolish decision, but at least he didn’t act as though the city’s iniquity was inconsequential (2 Peter 2:7-8). He was oppressed and tormented by the behavior of the wicked. We should be, too.

And yet, pointing out Swift’s blasphemies or suggesting that Christians ought to avoid certain shows, movies, or platforms stirs up outrage among many Christians.

Why? If this is a battle between competing religions, why eat at the table of the demons, to paraphrase 1 Corinthians 10? Why remain neutral in a battle to set the culture’s bedrock?

That, more than anything, is what I’m getting at here. A Christian who has more of a gag reflex at a preacher who calls out Taylor Swift than they do at Taylor Swift’s lyrics needs to rethink some things.

It’s not about Taylor Swift. It’s about who she, we, and our culture at large are accepting as god, or God.

The world knows that there are two sides, and they’re playing for keeps. When will Christians acknowledge the same reality?

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Notes

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