Between Two Worlds is a Christian rap album released by Trip
Lee in 2010. The genre of Christian rap really started to take off around 10
years ago. I started listening to Trip Lee and other artists after a friend recommended
them to me, and I’ve gotten more into it over the last couple of years.
While Trip Lee’s music is catchy and has great beats, what
has kept me interested and engaged in it is the great theology behind the songs.
The album is certainly not just one of those consumer items labeled as “Christian”
in order to sell. Trip Lee tells it like it is, and his music is firmly based
in Scripture.
Especially prevalent in this album is the picture of a
fallen world and the redemption that Christ brings. Prognosis is a unique song in which Trip Lee tells the state of his
sinfulness through the analogy of what it would feel like to learn that you
have contracted a fatal disease. At the end of the song he switches over to rapping
about spiritual disease, and the utter despair we’d be left with without Jesus.
Another song, Twisted, is about how
fallen the world is. It’s about just how totally messed up things are. It
especially emphasizes the good gifts the Father has given us, and how we’ve
taken those and pridefully twisted them to honor ourselves. Yet in these songs
Trip Lee doesn’t leave us in despair. He
weaves Jesus’ redemptive work into all of them. One song, The Invasion(Hero), does this especially well. It tells of Jesus as
our hero, the one to redeem us and bring his kingdom into the world. There’s a
great lyric from this song that I think clearly shows Jesus’ redemptive kingdom
work:
The
root of every need is separation from Creator
Jesus came humbly to restore us to our maker
And later He'll restore all that He made bruh, He's Jesus
Jesus came humbly to restore us to our maker
And later He'll restore all that He made bruh, He's Jesus
Discussion Questions
1.
What are some common gifts from God that we
often twist and distort as Christians?
2.
Like the fatal disease in Prognosis, how can other worldly or physical problems tell us about
our human nature, and how can we link them to the gospel?
Thanks for sharing about an artist you enjoy, Chad. I'm curious what Lee would actually say all of this looks like in practice. It's one thing to talk about redemption and the internal changes that Christians experience...but what difference does it make for our lives in the world? As Walsh and Keesmaat and Plantinga point out, thinking on heavenly things isn't just so our minds can "escape," but so we can figure out what the coming kingdom means for us here and now.
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