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I just learned the other day that the music of Kate Smith is banned in some places. Kate Smith, beloved singer of God Bless America, who had a 50-year singing career, passing away in 1986 at the age of 79, recorded a song in 1931 when she was 24, that affirmed, essentially, that black people’s “destiny” was to do grunt work. Actually, she wrote the song.

I’m not here to castigate or exonerate Kate Smith. I’ve already written about our unseemly rush to condemn people for things they did decades ago. (Mark E’s comment is worth the read, also.) What’s worth thinking about is how much am I a product of my time just as Kate was a product of her time?

By contrast, the musical South Pacific was written in the same era, 1949, and it contains the song, “You’ve got to be carefully taught,” which makes a strong case against racial prejudice. The lyrics are worth the read. What’s fascinating is that I’ve heard (and played) music from South Pacific my whole life, but I don’t remember hearing this song until I saw the stage play in its entirety just a few years ago.

Why were Rodgers and Hammerstein sensitive to an issue to the point of irritating a lot of people and perhaps dooming the show when many others were oblivious to it? And again, what might I be missing?

The Pharisees were well-respected in their day and thought they were pleasing God. Then Jesus came along.

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. (Matthew 23.1 – 7, ESV)

If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. (Philippians 3.4 – 7, ESV)