OPINION:
Rapper Lil Nas X launched a brand of athletic wear called “Satan Shoes” that includes an upside-down Christian cross, a pair of bronze pentagrams, a Bible reference to Luke 10:18 — about the evil one’s lightning-quick fall from Heaven — and a drop of human blood. Real human blood.
This is a stark picture of the moral decaying of America. And at Easter time, no less.
This is not about a pair of shoes, per se.
This is about the fact that a pair of shoes marketed as a glory to Satan could actually generate interest among mainstream consumers in a country that was founded on godly principles — on the notion of individual rights coming from God, not government.
On the notion that this democratic-republic would only last so long as the people were moral and virtuous.
On the notion that liberty is tied to religion and morality at the hip, and that as the culture degrades, so, too, citizen freedoms — because cultural depravity breeds chaos breeds Big Government.
Maybe these shoes, released in a limited 666 number, are simply a rap artist’s way of making some quick gimmicky bucks. After all, the company that collaborated to make the shoes, MSCHF, also released in 2019 its “Jesus Shoes” containing “holy water” from the Jordan River.
But that doesn’t mean they’re culturally harmless. Or humorous.
Combine these “Satan’s Shoes” with the abhorrent pressures of the Satanic Temple to place its ungodly Baphomet statue on public grounds, as well as that same group’s abhorrent pressure to put its ungodly “Satanic Children’s Big Book of Activities” into the hands of public school students, as well as that same group’s 2019 win of an IRS tax-exempt label as a charitable organization — like a church — and suddenly this footwear takes on the shine of a societal trend to normalize evil.
To make light of evil, even.
Worse, at the same time evil is going mainstream, godliness is going underground.
“In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace,” Pew Research Center reported in late 2019.
The survey conducted between 2018 and 2019 found that “65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religion, down 12 percentage points over the past decade. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or ‘nothing in particular,’ now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009.”
These are dramatic shifts in cultural beliefs. And as the culture goes, so, too, the politics. So, too, the fate of the nation. If America’s culture is intertwined with atheism or unbelief, the political world will reflect a people who lead not by respect for and reliance on a higher power, a Creator, but rather by the wisdom of their own minds and the whims of their own hearts — which means absolutes become nonexistent, standards shift like sands in the wind and ultimately, anything goes.
Anything — like satanism.
Anything — like evil.
Anything — like making light of evil to the point that Satan becomes nothing more than a symbol on a pair of shoes, coveted by rap fans and youthful “nones.” Which is precisely where he does his best work.
Regard these shoes as a sign of America’s sickened soul. In better times, they simply wouldn’t be.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
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