“…the passions of the flesh wage war against your soul.” – 1 Peter 2:11
The best way to describe this season of the year is “flesh versus spirit”. While the Crop Over Festival is believed to bring over $80 million into our economy, there is a sense in which the impact on the spiritual atmosphere over the country is devastating.
There is sense in which the Crop Over Festival has long lost its way. This festival had its origins in the closure of the sugar crop. In its original dispensation it was a reservoir of creativity. We revelled in the thematic display of the various bands which all sought to capture aspects of the industry in an array of themes that were all linked to the sugar industry. The costuming was informed by those themes and reflected various components of our cultural experiences as an independent country with a history of sugar and slavery behind us.
Veteran broadcaster Larry Mayers seems to be saying more than “calling for the pioneers” of the festival to be included. (SATURDAY SUN, July 12). I hear my friend Larry lamenting how the festival needs to get back to its original moorings. I hear Larry calling for a return to the glory days when you could easily allow your children and grandchildren to listen to the music and watch it on television. I hear Larry regretting how the festival has lost its way. Once you read between the lines, that message is clear.
So we say Crop Over is “we culture”. So I ask what is we culture? Is it limited to movements below the hips? Is it confined to the lewdest and crudest display of vulgarity with simulated sex pervading the streets on Kadooment Day? Does it include adults “wuking up” on innocent li’l children who are inducted into the hall of lewdness from which it seems impossible for them to extricate themselves? Does it include the excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages and the possible insertion of date-rape drugs that leave many a female unaware of their perpetrators by next morning? Does it include the pervasive nakedness that begs to be clothed as cameras peer deep into the exposed butts and thighs with little left to the imagination? Does it include the Foreday Morning fondling and molestation that occur under the cover of the rising day and the drunken stupor that greets it?
No wonder why veteran band leader Betty West laments the skimpiness of costumes and hopes and longs for greater cover. My fear is that as the spectacle of body painting penetrates the festival it will be difficult to discern who is naked and who is clothed? Is this we culture? Is this all we can offer?
So is revelry wrong? Is dancing against the principles of the Bible? In Exodus Chapter 32 when Moses returned from talking to God and saw the people turning to sinful actions he was displeased.
The people of Israel danced as part of their celebration of the golden calf. Dancing per se is not noted as wrong, but dancing in celebration of an idol made Moses (and God) angry.
There was an unrestrained attitude of partying around the golden calf. [They became] a laughing stock to their enemies.” While the details of their behaviour are not given, clearly their actions were unruly, uncivilised, and ungodly. http://www.gotquestions.org/pagan-revelry.html.
Paul advises the Galatians “to walk in the spirit …and not fulfill the lusts of the flesh”. Harry Osbourne speaks of the works of the flesh as “revellings”, “revelries”, “orgies” or “carousing”, all translations of the Greek word komos. In Romans 13, we are advised to cast off the works of darkness, to walk honestly – not in rioting and drunkenness, nor in chambering and wantonness”… We are to put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provisions for the flesh, to fulfill the lust thereof.”
So Crop Over might best be described as “a festival of the flesh”in which there is obviously no room for the “things of the Spirit”. In Galatians 5, the flesh and the spirit “are contrary one to the other”. During this “estival of the flesh”, multiple demonic spirits are released into the atmosphere and then it is role of the church, not just Alff Padmore and the SSA to clean up the mess after. Throughout this festival, through our music, our street parties, our Kadooment and our nocturnal and riotous processions, we release the spirits of lewdness, nakedness, drunkenness, uncleanness and lasciviousness which is defined as sexual excess, unbridled lust, debauchery, and sensuality and suggests a disregard for public decency. This is the ungodly, unholy spectacle into which our premier festival has degenerated.
It is in this sense that I declare that what we call “Crop Over” is nothing more than a catalyst for the destruction of our moral fabric.
• Matthew Farley is a secondary school principal, chairman of the National Forum on Education and a social commentator.
