The Good Life

Here's an excerpt from The Good Life, Trip Lee's contribution to the June issue of Tabletalk:

I am a lover of hip hop. I fell in love with the music form when I was 10, and I've never been the same since. As a child and a teenager, when I wasn't in class or asleep, I was listening to my favorite rappers. I hung on their every word, and they had a lot to say. Most rappers don't intend to be teachers, but that doesn't mean I wasn't learning. I listened closely to their ideas about the good life—and I liked what I heard.

With albums in my CD player such as Get Rich or Die Trying, are you surprised my idea of the good life was having a wallet so stuffed it wouldn't even close? It wasn't all about money, though. I can't forget the lessons I learned about status (chase it), women (chase them), and happiness (chase it by chasing the first two).

Don't get me wrong, though. Hip hop music was not the problem; sinful lies were. The rest of the culture told me those exact same lies in a more subtle fashion. And my self-centered, glory-hungry heart ate them up. All of us live by faith, and sadly, I believed the lies of the enemy over the truth of God. But when I was still a teenager I met Jesus, and what I heard from Him challenged every idea I had about the good life.

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