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Jay-Z Vs. Jesus…PLEASE READ!

“Hail Mary to the city, you’re a virgin, and Jesus can’t save you, life starts when the church ends.” I’m sure we have all heard this line recently and there has been a very heated debate about the context in which Jay-Z used it on the song “Empire State Of Mind”. Was it really a direct shot at Jesus Christ? Was it just a metaphor? Well, once again, I always love to give my two cents on these matters and tell you how I interpreted the line and the song. Here goes ” A Dreamer’s Perspective”.

Now the obvious concern and uproar on the line is the possibly blasphemous and anti-Christian nature of the lyrics. From that side of the argument, people perceive that Jay-Z is saying that “Jesus can’t save you”, in opposition to that fact that in Christian spiritual faith, Jesus is known as the SAVIOR of mankind. He is God’s son and he was sent to earth as God in the human form to ultimately be brutally killed and die upon the cross to give hope and cleanse the sins of everyone in the world. He was sent to SAVE us. So when Christians or even people who may not be deeply into the Christian faith but still believe in Jesus and his mission hear that line, it’s easy for them to look sideways. I, as a Christian myself, definitely had some second-guessing going on as to Jay-Z’s motive behind saying the line was.

Now let’s go onto the next part of the line, “Life starts when the church ends…” In the same vein, this line is interpreted to mean that real life as we know it can’t start until church is over. Many people viewed that line as saying the church needs to be eliminated in order for life to really begin. Now, some may not understand the spiritual significance of the reasoning being opposition to that line, but here it is: In the Christian faith, there is prophecy within the Bible about a rapture happening towards the end of the world. That is when all those who are Christians will be taken to be with Jesus, leaving those who did not believe in him on Earth. The prophecy continues to say that the people on Earth will go under a New World Order and direction where someone referred to biblically as the “Anti-Christ” will rise up and bring some sort of a false sense of world peace. Everyone in the world will be as one and think this man is the “savior” of the world. The idea behind it is that true life will really start because we will live in a completely peaceful world. So people on the side of this argument are basically saying that Jay-Z is conveying that life won’t begin until the Anti-Christ takes over the world, when the church is gone.

Now, I’d like to look at the line from an objective standpoint and explore some of the other possible meanings of the line. A lot of people are looking at the line like this: In the context of the verse, Jay-Z talks about the temptations of New York City and a female. Here’s the entire verse:

“Lights is blinding,
Girls need blinders
Or they can step out of bounds quick,
The side lines is blind with casualties,
who sip the life casually, then gradually become worse,
Don’t bite the apple Eve,
Caught up in the in crowd,
Now you’re in-style,
And in the winter gets cold, En vogue with your skin out,
The city of sin is a pity on a whim.
Good girls gone bad, the city’s filled with them,
Mommy took a bus trip and now she got her bust out,
Everybody ride her, just like a bus route,
Hail Mary to the city, you’re a Virgin,
And Jesus can’t save you, life starts when the church ends,
Came here for school, graduated to the high life,
Ball players, rap stars, addicted to the limelight,
MDMA got you feeling like a champion,
The city never sleeps better slip you a Ambien.”

In the verse, he talks about a girl who came to New York and essentially became caught up in the life. It’s a classic common story that we see depicted in movies and television. It happens every day. Someone comes to a new city for college or something. They have an original goal when they come, but their environment and newer lifestyle influences them and it gradually takes over. It starts with “Oh, I’m not going to the clubs and stuff. I need to study. I’m here for school, not to party.” Then over time, it becomes, “Oh, I guess going out for one drink tonight won’t hurt.” This ultimately evolves into the subject matter for Kanye West’s “Drunk and Hot Girls”. In the sense of this context, it could be saying “Jesus can’t save you” if you don’t let him. If you are giving into temptations, “eating the apple” when told not to, Jesus can’t save you. To back that up with Christian theology, it’s simple; God says he can’t save anyone who doesn’t want to save themselves.

“Life starts when the church ends” could be interpreted by a way I’ve felt for the longest. One of my reasons as a Christian person that I don’t call my music “Christian rap” is because it’s simply hip-hop music; poetry if you will, that I create. I am a Christian, but something about the term “Christian rap” always made me feel like the music would only be for Christian people. I wasn’t interested in preaching to the choir. I want to reach everybody in the world. So when people would ask me about my reasoning, I would always tell them that we still have to live in the regular world from the time we leave church on Sunday afternoon and return the next week on Sunday Morning. I want to make music for LIFE and LIFE entails all aspects, including the times you are not at your spiritual places of worship. So when Jay-Z said that line, I could understand how it could have been about how you have to live life on the right track even AFTER church is over.

In conclusion, my personal opinion on the line is this: I feel it could be looked at both ways, so I think we will truly never know the meaning and motive unless we ask Jay-Z personally, and even then, we still may not know the TRUTH because hey, we can’t read minds. It’s as simple as that. I do personally believe that saying anything that could be perceived as blasphemous is not a good look in general. I’d like it if artists were more direct and didn’t leave things up to interpretation. But in that same vein, I also like when artists are more mysterious sometimes as well. It makes the music more interactive. It sparks conversation and debate. Maybe this was Jay-Z’s intention. Who knows? Frankly, who cares? For myself, the line didn’t sway my belief in Jesus Christ and if it did for someone else, maybe they should reanalyze how much they believed in this faith in the first place if one human being saying a line could change your entire perspective on a religion or spiritual following that you have dedicated your life to.