Getting Closer to God Through Limiting Taylor Swift

by Tyler Glover

"Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry."
 
-1 Corinthians 10:14

This year, I made a New Year's resolution that would shock everyone! 
 
Since 2007, I have been a diehard Swiftie. After realizing my best friend would never love me the way I loved her, I got into my red 1998 Chevrolet Cavalier on a rainy afternoon to escape. I turned on KSSN 96 FM, our local country music radio station and the first lyrics I hear are: "I bet she's beautiful, that girl he talks about, and she's got everything that I have to live without." This tale of unrequited love completely captured the love, the pain, the sadness, the helplessness, and the overwhelming feeling of longing for her to be with me. Taylor Swift's "Teardrops On My Guitar" took a really sad moment in my life and offered me the spiritual hug that I needed. She let me know she had experienced the same thing I was going through and made my feelings feel validated. I was not alone. When an artist connects with you in that way, you want to hear more, so I did. The more I heard from Swift, the more I fell in love with her.
 
It is a completely normal thing for people to feel connected to particular songs because of the way they relate to our lives. In my experience with this though, it might be one or two songs from an artist that applied to me and I did not connect with other entries in their catalog. This has never been the case with Taylor Swift throughout all 18 years of her career. Every album has helped me unlock feelings that I either presently have or have had in the past but could not put into words. It felt like Swift was unlocking all of the pain for me and being the therapy I needed to finally process so many emotions that I had never dealt with before. 
 
So, as the years went on and more albums released, I became more and more obsessed with this artist and her validation of my feelings. I feel like we as a society do not talk about what we go through enough. People seem to live their dream lives with their dream jobs, their dream children, and their dream white picket fences. It is an isolating feeling for someone who knows they do not have their lives together and knows they can never attain that level of "perfection" that others put out into the world. Through many experiences in my life, I have felt completely gaslit about the way things have transpired. I have been made to feel crazy for the way I think and have people tell me that the feelings I have are not genuine or meaningful. While I have had to deal with this, Swift has been there for me through a song telling me it is going to be OK.
 
While this bond that formed between me and Swift's music was innocent and in a way, beautiful, it turned into something that is not OK. I may be a Swiftie, but I am also a Christian. I believe that there is one God and that He created the heavens and the Earth. I believe that He sent His Son, Jesus, down to die for my sins because of his overwhelming love for me. I believe that if you repent and get baptized for the remission of your sins, you will be in Heaven if you continue to remain faithful to God throughout your life. I believe that I should be living my life for Him, studying the Bible, and seeking to live my life in a way that would be pleasing to my Creator. I feel like I should be searching for ways in my life to please Him instead of spending so much time listening to my favorite musical therapist.
 
Now, we have arrived at the New Year's resolution that I made: I have decided to start limiting how many Taylor Swift songs I am allowed to listen to in a single day. She has become a complete obsession and an idol in my life. It is not a bad thing to like music or to like an artist but it IS sinful to idolize a person. All of the time I am devoting to Swift, I should be devoting to God. I do not think it is wrong to listen to Taylor Swift’s music so I will continue to but do so in moderation. The overwhelming hours I have given to Taylor Swift, I should be giving to God. The amount of time I have given God this last year needs to be the amount of time I give Taylor Swift this year and vice versa.
 
The important thing to remember here is that God is a jealous God. Exodus 34:14 says, "For you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God." While I would not blatantly say that Taylor Swift is a god out loud or necessarily think of her that way, I have been placing her on the pedestal that I should be placing God on. Whether I have been intentionally doing it or not, it is still wrong. 
 
The parameters that I put on myself were for me to listen to only six songs per day for the first week, go down to five songs for the second week, four songs a day for the third week, and get down to three per day. Three per day is what I will be allowed to listen to when it is all said and done. I did give myself one condition. If it is an album release week, I can listen to the new album several times and not only have to listen to three songs per day. After seven days with the new album though, I return to just three songs per day.
 
Does this mean that I am going to lose my passion and intense love for Taylor Swift's music?
 
ABSOLUTELY NOT!
 
I am still so excited that Swift just became the first artist to win the Album of the Year Grammy Award four times, that she was TIME Magazine's Person of the Year, and I will be at the store on April 19th, ready to purchase my copy of her new album, The Tortured Poets Department. I also have become a huge fan of the Kansas City Chiefs! I started watching just because of her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, but now I love the entire team and enjoy watching them. I have never really enjoyed watching sports but my son has and this has brought us closer together.
 
This is not an article bashing Swift in any way, shape, form, or fashion.
 
She is in my opinion, the greatest artist of our lifetime, the G.O.A.T., and an amazing role model for my daughters. I think we can let anything in our lives get in the way of us having a relationship with God and that it does not always intentionally happen. Some of these things are even good things. Like, it is not wrong for my son to play baseball but is it right for him to play a game on a Sunday morning
instead of going to worship? NO! He is picking a worldly thing over the opportunity he gets to give God the glory and the praise that he deserves! 
 
My New Year's resolution of limiting my consumption of Taylor Swift’s music is a decision I made to bring me closer to God. When I am standing before God on Judgment Day, I know that this decision will have been the right decision to make. I think it is important for us to always self-reflect and make decisions that will help us become the best version of ourselves. This decision will bring me closer to being the person that God has called me to be.