Lily Allen

My daughter had quoted singer, Lily Allen, on Facebook and I nearly edited my comment which was "Lily Allen Rocks!" - I was not sure whether I should say that when her songs contain more than their fair share of profanity.

But, despite the bad language, the song which my children careful substitute the f-word in, is very good in my mind as it expresses anger at those people who diminish others because of sexuality and general narrowmindedness - the gist of the song is that Allen does not want to be friends with these sorts of people.

Anger, righteously expressed is not something we are comfortable with but, perhaps, this is a case in point about being careful. My guess is that she is blacklisted in many households - this is what she, no doubt, wants as a young teen audience will only become more adoring - however, for most of us this cascade of bad language would cause a sort of alienation from which it might be difficult to escape.

But we still get angry with things and seeking how to express it goes to the heart of this song - how do we express our anger without diminishing another person? The people Allen is criticising are angry people who simply want the world to be like them - how do we deal with people like that? There are plenty of them. How do we show compassion and kindness to those who seem to have no compassion and kindness for anyone else - but this is our call.

And then when we are angry with each other - how do we deal with that - especially when the other person does not seem to be listening very well. I suppose the small piece of insight that the song might give is that Allen has observed the other very closely before rejecting them - she understands, at least some, of their inner motivation. She has taken time.

This is always a good thing - to take time to understand - even if we will never agree. There are some people who we will never be best friends with but, as Christians, we have no excuse for reducing anyone to less that who they are (and less than who we are) in the sight of God my meanness and name calling.