A Biblical Breakdown of MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name):
& Why Lil Nas X Is More Saint than Satanette
What is blasphemy & did MONTERO commit it?
To blaspheme is to commit an offense or sacrilege against God. It’s fair to say that MONTERO offers no direct offense to God.
MONTERO, the video that is, is all about Satan. Satan is Christendom’s ultimate villain – the symbol of all that’s evil, vile, and unholy. Taking liberties with Satan, it could be argued, could be seen as taking liberties with Scripture – because by doing so for a literalist, you’re not taking the Good Book nearly seriously enough.
As you may’ve heard, Scripture has some things to say about homosexuality. And for a tradition that’s as doctrinally anti-sex – Hello? Circumcision? (FYI, in removing the foreskin the boy loses 20% of his member’s nerve endings and sensitivity) – and virulently anti-woman as Christianity, and since homosexual sex is about sex for its own sake and not about being fruitful and multiplying, well, you can see the problem.
The fact that MONTERO is so open and assertive with its homoeroticism, that it also tripped the ire of Christians should’ve surprised no one.
What about the outrage, then?
Projectile eye-bleeding from the graying Reactionary punditry, that was to be expected. But what of the Millennial Barbarians of the Junior Punditry like Candace Owens, Tomi Lahren, Ben Shapiro, and Tucker Carlson? (Owens gave Nas credit for destroying the youth of America.) While their slang may be fresher (if awkward), their ideology appears to be just as fusty as their redneck Preparation H Generation grandparents.
Nas has been accused of creating the MONTERO controversy intentionally and strategically. Politico said he “flipped the book of Conservatives’ culture war playbook” and beat them at their own game. Despite the intensity of the caterwauling, the reactions of the Outrage Industrial-Complex have only backfired. Not only did the opponents get served a full Twitter roasting, their whinging fueled enough interest in the song to make it the #1 single upon release. (And as you may’ve heard, Nas also did SNL.)
By any standard of Cancel Culture, the hissy was a total fail.
Who is Satan?
All Abrahamic traditions have some version of an evil arch-character. In Christianity, Lucifer is a non-physical entity that seduces humans into sin or falsehood. In Judaism, Satan is seen as an agent subservient to God or typically regarded as a metaphor for the yetzer hara, or “evil inclination” of mortals. In Christianity and Islam, the Devil is usually seen as either a fallen angel or a jinn.
The closest the Christian Bible gets of a description is from 2 Corinthians 11:14: “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.” The surrounding verses refer to Satan as having human servants that disguise themselves as “apostles of Christ” and “servants of righteousness.” In context, these descriptions are referring to false teachers. (The Bible spends a lot of time gassing the competition.) Doesn’t this description imply that most faithful wouldn’t recognize him if they saw him?
For his part, Nas says was inspired by his own experience. In response to all the booloo and net rage, Nas posted this to Twitter:
I spent my entire teenage years hating myself because of the [expletive] y’all preached would happen to me because i was gay. So i hope u are mad, stay mad, feel the same anger you teach us to have towards ourselves.
So, why all the stink?
The anti-Nas reactions seem mostly like performative pissing down the blowhole. You wonder if anyone has been watching television or YouTube lately. Is it that Nas satirized Satan or that he gays it all up with the lap dance and a happy ending? Satan gets killed in the end. Why isn’t that a good thing?
Conclusion: For religionists, a sacrilege against the very symbol of sacrilege is also a sacrilege. That’s so meta it’s dizzying.
Some Biblical Context: Why insulting Satan is a spitball at his employer
- According to the Bible, as the creator of all things, God also created Hell. God is the architect of EVERYTHING and boasts of creating the light and dark, peace and evil. It was also Him that installed Satan as His subcontractor – Chief Operating Officer of the Dirty Deeds and Punishments Department. Together, Satan and the Fallen Angels are God’s C-Suite. But ultimately it’s God who decides who goes down there (or wherever).
- As a Fallen Angel #1, Satans’s job description was to tempt humanity to sin. Then, when successful to that cause, mete out utterly heinous eternal punishments – again, according to his job description. Where does he do this? In the Lake of Fire – or Hell, Sheol, Gehenna – those places created by God.
- By seducing Satan, Nas is only repeating plots from Biblical stories like Salom̩ and King Herod Рwhere a young woman seduces the king through dance Рand Judith and Holofernes Рwhere a beauty wines and cruises a general as part of her ruse to kill him.
Fun facts
- According to the Scripture of record (AKA as the Bible and Torah), a total of 2,821,364 deaths are specifically given in scripture as either directly manifested by God or carried out with his oversight or approval.
- Satan kill count? Only 10. And if you add in the multitudes lost in The Flood, that makes for an estimate closer to 25 million. To also include other genocides, famines, various massacres, and all other cataclysms that YHWH watched with indifference from on high, the count gets closer to Thanos territory.
- By one estimate, somebody did the math and put the totals of Flood deaths at 40,000 to 1,067,000.
- Again, according to Scripture, God’s stats beat Satan’s kills by 227,037% – and that doesn’t even include women and children. (Go to the link and see a graph.)
- Nationally known radio pastor Alistair Begg described the dilemma Christians must have as followers of “the most loving person who has ever lived” (Christ) who also spoke “straightforwardly about the awfulness of hell.” A place, presumably, He could change if He so desired. But he doesn’t.
