Recently, a group of “musicians” (and I use that term very loosely) committed audio sacrilege with a remake of “We Are the World” that is no doubt making Michael Jackson turn over in his grave. Now, the very spirit of the song itself is coming under attack. Even more ironic is that the song, which calls us to the love and charity that God asks of us, has come under fire by a christian blog. Being one of the last die hards from the “We Can Change the World” camps of the 80's, I felt a detailed response was in order.

The post appeared on the Later Days Ministry blog (author not identified, so I will default the pronoun “he:), and the general idea is a good one to some extent and I can certainly agree with the moral decline of our society being fueled by the media, etc. Working from within a Biblical framework, I can certainly agree that being influenced by the things of the world instead of focusing on spiritual and moral matter is always a bad move; however the author chose the wrong song to illustrate his example.

One of the problems that I have with the post is that he is trying to impose the current modern ideologies on the remake of the song "We Are the World" instead of what its original intent was nearly 30 years ago and there is always a problem with a backward application of ideology. The song comes from the heartfelt movement of the 80's when your confession of a belief in the Almighty was not the "taboo" subject that it is today. And the song was written at a time when we in the US were starting to realize just how small this globe of ours really is and that to “love thy neighbor” did not only mean the guy next door but everyone that we share this planet with. The starving child in a third world country is just as much my “neighbor” and my responsibility as the guy down the street, and that is the heart of what this song and its movement were originally about and because some twits of the day ripped it off that should not disqualify its merit or its intent. Of course, I am certainly not saying that everyone who lived in the 80's was on board with this sentiment merely because they existed in that time frame, I am merely saying that you must consider the song within its own cultural frame work.

Further, the criticisms of the song are way off. No where in the Bible did Christ ever administer ONLY to those who were righteous, after all he said he came not for the righteous but for the sinner; and do you ever see Christ trying to convert someone before he fed them or healed them? No, our moral obligations of charity are to all, not only to those who may happen to believe as we do. When God commanded that we were to leave a portion of our fields and vineyards for the poor and the stranger (Lev 19:9-10) there were no qualifiers that said “only if they believe as you do”; indeed, since they were strangers it would be impossible to even know what they believed or which gods they may have worshiped. The command for charity is demanded from us for all of God's children.

And yes, we ARE all His children, which brings me to my second problem with this post. The author criticizes the song for saying that we are all God's children, apparently he has not read his own Bible or he would realize that that is exactly what it says. Do some choose to deny Him and live in disobedience? Of course, but just like the prodigal son, God never stops being their creator all the same and that door remains open for them to return home at any point as long as they still draw a breath upon this Earth. To make this claim in fact is counter productive and contradictory because, on one hand, you are saying that the world has fallen into disobedience to our Heavenly Father; then turning around and saying that the world does not have a father to disobey in the first place. So which is it?

The illogical conclusions drawn by this author do not stop there. Read on to part 2 of my response to “We Are the World: The Spirit of the World” from the Later Days Ministry blog.