Christians who love Lady Gaga in Bangkok

Lady Gaga is coming to Bangkok at the end of the month. I won't be at the concert. And to be honest, I don't know her music very well.

But I love her. I love her for her talent. She is a great performer. I love her for her creativity. I love her for her vulnerability and ability to connect with disenfranchised youth. And sometimes I love her for her honesty and insight. The Judas song (for example) talks much more honestly about sin, it's attraction and it's consequences than most hymns we sing on Sundays.

But most of all - I love her as someone created in the image of God with tremendous potential for good, love, joy and beauty.

A friend of mine sent me some links recently claiming Gaga was a Satan worshiper. This might or might not be true. Who knows? (The particular links provided were pretty dubious.)

I read or watched (I can't remember which) an interview where she talked about being confronted by a Christian group out in front of one of her concerts. The guy she talked to screamed at her and told her she was going to hell.

Maybe. But how does he know? And who is he to judge? And (most importantly) why was he so excited about it? Scripture says that God would like everyone to be saved. 1 Timothy 2:4

I am preaching from Romans 8 this weekend. Towards the end there is the famous bit about nothing being able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

If God is for us, who can be against us? ³² He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? ³³ Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. ³⁴ Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. ³⁵ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? ³⁶ As it is written:
   “For your sake we face death all day long;
   we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
 ³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹ neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

These verses are written to Christians facing persecution and stress. I don't know if Lady Gaga is a Christian (If she is she has a strange way of showing it!). But there is a sense in which these verses apply to everyone regardless of religion. God is always with us. Waiting. Hoping. Reaching out to us.

As Christians, our job is to be God's ambassadors. That means we reach out too... with love. Not with condemnation or judgment. But with love, hope and joy.

That's why if I did go to the Lady Gaga concert in Bangkok next month, I wouldn't take a sign saying she was going to hell. I would take a sign that reads, "Christians who love Lady Gaga."

Would that make me a little monster?