Should Christians be Picketing Gaga?

When Lady Gaga came to Cape Town, Christian groups were in uproar trying to stop her from playing in the stadium. As far as I can gather people believe her to be a satanist. I don't know if she is a satanist, and unfortunately I think many of the Christian protesters might be as uninformed as I am about her beliefs. What I do know is that singers often try and stand out from the crowd, and stir up controversy.

If she was a satanist I could understand the position of the Christian organisations. The Church sees one of it's roles to protect society from 'darkness', and to speak up on issues that it deems important for the public. It is almost as though the Church were the older brother to the populus, stepping in when necessary to stop it's younger sibling from getting into too much trouble.

This idea might trouble non-Christians as they would no doubt say "but who do these Christians think they are trying to protect me? I never gave them that right." This is a valid point, although a Christian would then rebut with "you simply don't want protection because you don't know the dangers out there." This debate is one that must be looked at holistically and non-Christians should indeed try and see from a Christian perspective that the Church's actions are often meant out of love and concern even though they might not come across that way.

I recently saw this on Twitter (or something like this, I can't remember who posted it), "why aren't the Christians who protested against Lady Gaga not protesting against Chris Brown. Surely he has worse morals."

For me this is the problem with Christian organisations protesting against Lady Gaga. If they feel as though they are the moral plumb line for society, surely they would also need to take a stand against Chris Brown, a singer who is coming to Cape Town and is a serial women-abuser and infamously beat-up Rihanna. Talk about moral degradation...

But it's not just Chris Brown, the Church should be making even more hoopla about social justice issues. Some churches are making a noise and they are to be applauded, but on the whole there tends to be only quiet murmurs of problems. We can't take on the older brother role and scold those going to a concert, and then forget about our other brother's and sister's who are in dire need of clean water, food, health, clothing and protection.

I would agree that it is important that the Church act to point people towards God and stop moral degradation. However, my concern is whether or not we are seeing a splinter in society's eye, whilst ignoring the log of social injustice in our own eye. We need to pick our battles wisely and be the best representative of Christ's love we can be.