A Theology for 'Thug-ology'

A Theology for 'Thug-ology'

In our culture today there seems to be a growing glamorization of the thug. The bad guy is now the good guy.

We see this in so many areas of popular culture, from movies, to sports, to music. Let's start out with something that's a little bit of all of that: professional wrestling (even though you could argue that there's not much that's professional about it). That being the case, I must admit that I was raised on professional wrestling. 

I remember as a kid, watching wrestling on television, that it was so easy to tell the good guy from the bad guy. The good guy usually had blond hair, blue eyes, wore light-colored trunks, and smiled at the crowd as he shook hands while strolling to the ring. The bad guy usually had dark hair, dark trunks (which says something about good/bad stereotypes and racism, but we'll save that for another column), and yelled at the crowd as he went to the ring.

Telling the good from the bad isn't as obvious today. A guy comes out from backstage in dark trunks and is yelling at the crowd all the way down the aisle. He gets in the ring and gives the crowd the finger and then smashes a beer can on his face. But the crowd is cheering for him. Yep, he's the good guy. The bad guy, the glamorized thug, has been morphed into a superhero. If this were true just for professional wrestling, maybe it wouldn't be worth a column, but it doesn't stop there.

Music

Two of the biggest rappers today in mainstream hip-hop culture are Eminem and 50 Cent. They both have street credibility, which is important to young people buying their products. This street cred' derives from these two rappers' claims to have lived out most of what they're rapping about. Eminem uses his art form to talk about his dysfunctional mother, his drug use, and his fantasies of killing his baby's momma. 50 Cent claims to be a real gangsta, with real bullets still inside his body. He's really sold drugs, really beat people down, and all this and other real raw truths are the reason he's broken records for first-day record sales.

Then there's another popular rap artist in Tupac Shakur, who many young people claim isn't dead, but living somewhere on an island and making a comeback soon. Tupac is the immortal thug who was shot, spent time in jail for raping a girl, and was affiliated with ultimate-thug label Death Row Records. These rappers not only influence the inner city youth culture, but stay in business by attracting a strong white, young, suburban following…in life and death.

The Big Screen

What about the movies? Terminator movie has made it on the scene. When this trilogy first began, the terminator was a futuristic, thug machine sent back in time to take out the mother who would birth the savior for the human race in the upcoming war against the machines. In Terminator 3 the thug machine is a good guy (as it was in T2) sent back again, this time to save the very child whose mother he was out to kill in the first movie. Another movie Freddy Versus Jason, sees two serial-slasher thugs going head-to-head like some virtual immortal combat video game. Who's the good guy and who's the thug in this movie is for us to decide, I guess.

Then there are shows on cable like The Sopranos, in which the mob boss thug can kill, cheat, and exploit, yet have his character deepened beyond the tough-thug exterior down to a more caring and sensitive man who seeks guidance from a counselor. There's even a book that attempts to attach a theological slant and place some sort of biblical and redemptive halo over the head of this mob boss thug.

Ice Cube and Ice T both used the urban, black, gangsta thug role to spring board into major motion picture roles. And what about the young thug who went from the Titanic to lead one of The Gangs of New York? But these thug-characters-turned-heroes are merely branches grown out of a tree that encompassed The Godfather trilogy, The King of New York, The Warriors, The Mack, and Scarface, to name just a few.

Sports

Last but not least there's the arena of true professional sports (lest you think I thought professional wrestling was a true sport). Not only do we see the rise and glamorization of the thug athlete with characters such as Allen Iverson, Randy Moss, Mike Tyson, John Rocker, Dennis Rodman, and the ultimate gambling-but-not-on-his-own-team thug, Pete Rose, but now we see clean-cut athletes coming out of the thug closet, as in the case of Kobe Bryant. 

Now my point isn't just to bash all these people and talk about how youth workers need to keep all the kids in our youth groups away from these characters and all those influenced by them. Snoop Dog, a West Coast thug rapper, was recently asked to define what a thug is. His response was to say that President Bush was the biggest thug he knew. Needless to say, thug-ology is all around us. It's in movies, music, sports, and yes, even politics. Thug-ology can point to people who think they're above the law, people who try to justify immoral behavior on the grounds that they grew up in a messed-up neighborhood, the cut-throat business dealer, the politician obsessed with power, or the Robin Hood type who claims to just be trying to bring justice to the poor by keeping it real.

A Christian Response

Whatever the case, young people are being influenced through popular culture by thug-ology in many ways. It's in the fabric of our society. So what's a Christian to do with all of this? Do we create youth ministries that shelter young people from the thug-ocracy? No, we simply follow the ministry methods of Jesus, who, instead of trying to shelter people from the thug, targeted the thug in his ministry. Jesus sought out the thugs of his day and offered love, grace, and most importantly, transformation. Jesus cared about the thug, the outcast, the gangsta, the playa.

"They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. He lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain; for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him." Mark 5:1-6

If the thug is so influential, why not proactively create a ministry to the thug, offering an opportunity to raise up former thugs to become radical evangelists? Jesus had an agenda for the thug. When the thug in Mark 5 saw Jesus, he ran to him. Jesus created an environment right then and there to heal the young man of the internal hurt and pain that was oppressing his soul. Jesus created a refuge so that the demons on the inside of the young man would know that they weren't welcome any more. Jesus loves thugs.

Are you in denial about the thug influence on the young people around you? Are you proactively developing a ministry to reach high-risk young people in your midst? Do you think because you're not in inner-city ministry this issue has nothing to do with you?

At the highest level of youth ministry training there's a need to give serious consideration to the thug-ology factor in assessing what's influencing the youth culture. There's a need for youth ministry professionals to know enough about hip-hop and urban culture to know what gangsta rap is, its influence, and also to know that there's more to hip-hop culture than this thug element. Finally, there's a need for a thought-out theology of thug-ology that takes into consideration thug influencers, high-risk young people, and those affected by them.

Jesus didn't run from thugs; they ran to him. And in turn he offered an environment of transformation. Let's be the ones who raise the standards and be the hands of Christ reaching out to them!