Victor Chininin Buele

Well, here we are again. A new controversy. I tried to stay out of it mostly because I am pretty tired of such things. But this one is the kind of situation that intersects so many areas of life and culture that it just can’t be left alone.

Yesterday, it was the Big Game, just in case of Copyright infringement. The Chiefs were not playing, so I did not see a need to watch the game. I had plenty of other things to do. However, I had been hearing noise about the Halftime Show, and at first I figured it would be just like every year. But this one is different. Bad Bunny was involved. I could write a whole post about my musical distaste of his work, or about why I don’t even find it to be hardly musical at all, or about my concern that something supposedly artistic can become a divisive political issue with tones and subtones that make it very difficult to navigate.

But, I rather have one question for you. Instead of freaking out that something was sung in Spanish during the Super Bowl, why don’t you take me up on an invitation to walk in my shoes for a bit?

I am a father of three daughters and a little boy. I am a Christian. I am a husband who is committed to being faithful to his wife. I am a musician. I am a pastor.

I will tell you up front: I get it that it is possible to feel like being white in the United States today is some sort of disadvantage. If it weren’t, I doubt Donald J. Trump could have ever put the word President before his name. It is possible to look at what is happening all around and feel a sense of discouragement at the erosion of many symbols of traditional American life and culture. But as an American who is not white, let me tell you that being Latino in the U.S. today is not easy. I have had people not help me at the store, I have had people tell me to go back to Mexico, I have had people tell me that all of us, illegals, are going to be taken care of by Trump. But I will tell you this: neither you nor I get to play the victim. Things have changed. Nostalgia has a way to play tricks with our minds and to lead us to think that things were better, really better, before. There is nothing fun or pleasant about what is happening in the United States, but we cannot let ourselves be taken down by an avalanche of emotions and resentment, bitterness and pride. We do not have the luxury of being sinfully proud. We don’t.

If you are already looking at the world with eyes that say that people are against you and making it difficult to be a white American, clearly having a Latino perform at the halftime show of the most publicized and watched “American” football event of the year is going to mess around with your head. And you add the issues with immigration and the different social and cultural issues of our days, so yes, it can totally add up.

Now, let me tell you this: It should not be an issue that this was performed in Spanish. I don’t know where we get the ideal of speaking only one language. When I go to Europe for work, I am often ashamed at my ignorance. I speak Spanish, English, and I can defend myself in Portuguese. I understand it and read it, but my tongue still gets twisted. With three languages under my belt, I still feel grossly unprepared to be in Europe where many people surprise me with all the languages they know. If you are a Christian, and you are from the United States, I think it is imperative for you to understand that without languages there is no fulfillment of the Great Commission. We are called to preach the gospel to every creature. That necessarily requires us to be able to speak and write in other languages. We cannot have meaningful, deep, and fruitful relationships without language. And we need to understand cultures. The world is bigger than the USA.

For me the problem is what Spanish was spoken. I feel dirty when I hear Bad Bunny songs. I feel really sad. My daughters know to run away from this music when they happen to hear it somewhere. Why? Because I’m a prude? I do not want those lyrics coming into my daughters’ minds, much less my son’s. Benito sings of polygamy, multiple sexual relationships (or even just casual encounters) outside of marriage, leaves plenty of innuendo about his genitals and his multiple partners’, devalues marriage, glorifies sexual dancing, openly says that this lifestyle will break women’s hearts, minimizes the danger and consequences of binge drinking, cusses. There is nothing edifying about that, even setting aside my musical opinion of the tracks. I don’t want those lyrics anywhere near my kids. I also don’t want to be near them. Those lyrics together with the rhythms and sounds that carry them have a way to go very deep into the mind and the heart. I also don’t want the image that the Latina is a woman that finds her greatest joy and satisfaction perreando, literally dancing like a dog, or like it was put into English, twerking. I don’t want that near my eyes either.

I hate that the discussion is about something that has little to do with the substance of the problem. If we can’t even start with what I have presented, we are not even ready to start talking about all the cultural artifacts and ways in which Benito showed the middle finger to “the system” last night.

But before I go away, let me say that just because the competition went and put together a show of their own, that also was not something I would want to have anywhere near my children. That’s also an America that I don’t recognize. We can’t exalt a culture of drinking, a hard life, and topless dancers just because they put on the red, white, and blue. That also serves a God I don’t recognize. Sure, the man sang a verse in a song that hinted at the Bible and Jesus, but I think that the overall color, tone, and words of the show displayed an allegiance not to Christ but to a cause. While I pray that he has truly encountered Jesus Christ, I am not discussing here the profession of faith of a man I do not know personally but the overall tone and color of a show billed to be something suitable and commendable for my children to watch.

To be an American, and yes, like Benito did explicitly say, whether Canadian, from the United States, Mexican, Ecuadorian, Colombian, Dominican, etc., etc., etc., is far more than the expression of one famous artist. We are more diverse and culturally nuanced than that. We are far more complex and beautiful. We cannot even agree on the definition of what America is. There will always be some who love country music and all the culture behind it. There will always be those who go perrear. But our need is the same: we need Jesus Christ to rule over us, to transform our lives and hearts, to radically reorient our desires and morality. I am tired of little girls perreando to this garbage and men taking advantage of that culture to dishonor them. Showcasing this man and putting the spotlight on him and turning this into a culture war does nothing but glorify this further and make it not just acceptable but desireable. And that doesn’t make the sexual immorality rampant in the U.S. today something we ignore. We must. Far too many people are hurting and being hurt while we all pretend that there is no God and He does not have the last word on what our sexuality is and must be.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

Not just because somebody says something is love, it’s love.