The Brain Invasion of Lady Gaga

My son is a proud trombonist of the Temple City High School marching band. While I normally would highly encourage him to spend more time practicing his instrument, I was a bit dismayed the other day when he started blasting tunes from his band's field show late in the evening, just before my bedtime. One of the pieces happened to be a very upbeat rendition of Lady Gaga's overexposed hits – a very catchy tune, but the words to the song are unfortunately quite offensive to my sensibilities, and, shall I say, not quite appropriate for children. After a while, my son started to play other tunes, and I prepared myself to go to bed without much additional thought on the matter.

I woke up early the next morning as usual for my morning run, and as I stepped on the asphalt I did my best to meditate on the greatness of God and His creation:

"God, I praise you, for you have placed the moon and stars in the sky to shine in the night, and the heavens declare Your glory...BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, DA, DA, DI DI DI DI, DA, DA, DI DI DI DI, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM..."

I barely rounded the corner of the first block before my time with God was rudely interrupted by Lady Gaga's tune in my head.

"OK, Satan. Very funny. Now get thee out of my head so that I can give God the glory and honor that is due Him...Lord, forgive me, for my mind wandereth...O Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder consider all the works Thy hand hath made. I see the stars, I hear the rolling...BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, DA, DA, DI DI DI DI, DA, DA, DI DI DI DI, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM..."

Aaaaagh! Not THAT tune from Lady Gaga again! Fortunately I was only humming the notes and not singing the words. Once a catchy tune infiltrates one's brain, the only thing that can get rid of it is to replace it with another catchy tune. I spent the rest of my run futilely trying to make another song stick. I tried everything, from Amazing Grace and Jesus Loves Me to songs from Veggie Tales, even stuff from Sesame Street. Imagine me mouthing the words of Ernie's ode to his rubber ducky while perplexed neighbors and their dogs looked on.

Later that morning, I caught myself briefly humming a few bars of that festering tune while taking my shower, and while driving to work. Fortunately, diligence finally paid off, and the song was eventually extricated from my consciousness...after a few days.

In the apostle Paul's letter to the Philippians, he gave the following command,

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.  (Philippians 4:8)

Indeed, we must consciously do our best to fill our minds with the things of God, i.e., the good, the true and the beautiful, so that there is no room left for Satan to enter with his metastatic work of distraction and deception through mass media. To believe otherwise is to expose the soft underbellies of our faith to the devil.

Somehow, having the tune, "It's A Small World After All" stuck in my head no longer seems to be so bad.