Song: “I Don’t
Want It”
Artist: DC Talk
Album: Free at
Last (1992)
Track: 14
I was about 15 years old when this disc came out, and I’m
not sure I’d ever heard a Christian band talk about sex as openly as they did
in this tune. As just an indication of
how “explicit” this song was, we were listening to the album in the car once,
and my mom actually changed the track because they were so blunt in their
lyrics. Well, compared to some of the
stuff “Christian” bands are saying these days, this is pretty tame, and I
differ with my mother’s reaction. I
don’t think the boys crossed a line here.
This was a message that needed to be heard, and it inspired a lot of us
who were right at that age where sex was becoming a very big temptation. Their willingness to talk frankly about it
was a very good thing.
The Good
And I gave away a lot of what I’m thinking in the
introduction there. A lot of the good on
this album as a whole comes from their willingness to discuss certain
issues. Unfortunately, a lot of that
discussion ends up falling short. This
song gets closer than a lot of them, and what we have here is basically good.
Unfortunately, I think that most of Christian teaching on
this topic goes astray by arguing more along the lines of the world than making
a positive case for God’s holiness and righteousness. I listened to a sermon by J. R. Vassar (and I
haven’t the foggiest clue which one it was) where he relates a story about a
girl who was questioning him on why in the world he would wait until
marriage. His response to the girl along
these lines – say there is someone who knows literally everything, past and
future, and is perfectly wise. And say
you truly believe that this person loves you and wants the best for you. Would you do the things he says?
That argument is much better than what we see in a lot of
this stuff. When I was a teen, so many
people at church tried to scare me that I was going to get someone pregnant,
get AIDS and die, etc., etc. Then you
get into high school and college and you realize that just taking a little care
will prevent these outcomes nearly 100% of the time. If that’s the only reason to abstain, it’s
not much of a reason. Sex is really
great, and the risk is really small if you are careful.
But that’s not the only reason to abstain. We should abstain until marriage because the
Creator of sex, the perfectly wise and knowing God of the universe, has
designed sex to work on a much deeper level than we suspect, and He designed it
to work best between two people, one man and one woman, married and remaining
married for life. To settle for something
else is like, to borrow an analogy from C. S. Lewis, playing in the dirt on the
street because you haven’t understood what a vacation at the beach is
like. Our passion in this area is too
weak to be satisfied with such lesser forms of sex.
DCT does a pretty good job here focusing on the true reason
to wait until marriage – God. Not
pregnancy, not STDs, not shame or guilt, but God. I especially like the part where they talk
about people saying that “it takes two,” but “we gotta remember there's another
[God] in our lives.”
Lust in general is touched upon in the bridge, which is a
nice addition. They distinguish here
between the way of the world and the way of God, and that they are different.
Neither Good nor Bad
This is one of the few songs on the album that actually says
enough instead of just being endlessly repetitious. Still, they had a chance in the second rap to
say more, perhaps on the issue of lust, but instead they just repeated the rap
they already gave at the beginning. It’s
not really a problem, but I find it curious.
The Bad
There’s not a lot bad here.
There is a part where they slip into the normal and sub-biblical reasons
Christians give for not having sex when they say, “Safe is the way they say to
play, but then again safe ain't safe at all today.” It’s so much weaker than the other,
God-focused, arguments they gave that I cringe at the line since it’s such a
laughable argument. Still, this one part
does not destroy the message of the song.
Overall
Not at all bad. I
wish more Christians would give a defense of abstinence like this one. Actually, I wish more Christians would
actually believe the Bible’s teaching on sexuality in the first place.
