Jesus Wasn’t A Commuter

Answer to the culture. Well, what is culture? We seem to have come up with answers and solutions. One, culture is this invisible monster that comes through the TV, internet, and schoolteachers and steals your kids. Hide yo' kids, hide yo' wife -- they comin' for everybody. Let's get our Beauty and the Beast on, grab our biblical pitchforks, run into Hollyweird, and get the stomping! The other is more of a colonial approach. Those poor lil' colored kids don't know no better, living in these awful cities. Let's set those savages free and teach them to put down their desire for drugs, self-hate, and destructive behavior. Trade it for greed, financial dependence, and intellectual arrogance to assert over the other savages you colonizers haven't reached yet. Let me say it better: I've become fluent in that S.E.S. They call it gentrification. But in all your getting, get, and understanding, you don't get it, do you? You can fill your brain with a lifetime's worth of information and know nothing. You can know nothing and have a heart that breaks for a dying world -- therefore not having anything to offer them. See, that's the problem. Them. There's no them. "Them" is us. You are the culture. The city is you. Our Savior wasn't a commuter. He moved in to my city, can speak immigrant. The language of the broken, like the system and their English. I can read graffiti -- Google Maps of the hood, my city. I'm a citizen and partaker of the culture and the problem, just like you. The ingredients are interchangeable. I know you get this. That's why you're here. You understand what the presence of a spraycan did to my self-confidence. Listen, we livin' just enough for the city. Where I'm from, you either bang, slang, run or get increasingly efficient at putting the ball in the hole. Me? I stood under the light-pole, ciphering 'til morning. Come defending your name, crew, faith, and worldview. No curfew. We call it battling. Y'all could film blogs on the validity of multisite churches and whether or not video feeds are biblical. That's a first world issue affecting one percent of y'all. Meanwhile, we're canceling quinceaneras 'cause lil mama finna be one. We ain't got free wifi and I ain't got time to worry 'bout protected web keys. My son idolizes pimps -- help me, megachurch pastor! There's the elephant in the room. You don't get it, do you? This is where culture is made. Every artist, politician, professor, and kindergarten teacher. Every convo you have at the grocery store. It's us. We are the culture. We are the city. We are the slaves. We are the problem. How could we possibly be the solution? We need someone from the outside to move in. The Savior moved in. Walked the same streets of your soul. See, the city is you. Now you move into the city. Walk the same streets I came from. And pray He comes. It prospers. Because if it prospers, you will too.