Some Things Will Never Change?
Let’s begin in 1986. Bruce Hornsby, a musician who was trying to get a record deal by appealing to popular taste, decided to just write songs in his own style—ECM jazz. Bruce Hornsby finally got his record deal with RCA. One of the songs on his first album was a song a bit unusual for a boy who grew in a Virginia town where the majority viewed Martin Luther King Jr. as an evil man. That song was “The Way It Is”—a song dealing with Civil Rights Movement in the ‘60s.
Hornsby’s conclusion is that economic hardship and racial inequality can be helped through laws—like the 1964 Poverty Act, but at the end of the day unless racist hearts change—nothing will actually change. “That’s just the way it is.” As Hornsby says it:
“They passed a law in ’64/To give those who ain’t got a little more/But it only goes so far/Because the law don’t change another’s mind”
Fast forward to 1992. A twenty-one-year-old poet named Tupac picks up Hornsby’s work. Yes, I’m talking about that 2Pac—the West Coast gangster rapper who was fresh off his gold record 2Pacalypse Now. But Pac was always more than a rapper—he was a poet at heart.
2pac penned these words:
I see no changes, all I see is racist faces
Misplaced hate makes disgrace to races
We under, I wonder what it take to make this
One better place, let's erase the wait state
Take the evil out the people, they'll be acting right
'Cause both black and white are smokin' crack tonight
And only time we deal is when we kill each other
It takes skill to be real, time to heal each other
And though it seems Heaven-sent
We ain't ready to have a black President, huh
It ain't a secret don't conceal the fact
The penitentiary's packed and it's filled with blacks
I wake up in the morning and I ask myself
Is life worth living, should I blast myself
I'm tired of being poor and even worse I'm black
My stomach hurts so I'm lookin' for a purse to snatch
He'd been playing with combining these words with the Hornsby chorus: “That’s just the way it is/Some things’ll never change/That’s just the way it is/Ha, but don’t you believe them. But Pac ended up shelving that project and threw the above lyrics into another song, “I Wonder If Heaven Got a Ghetto”.
After 2Pac was murdered in 1996, many of his old poems, tracks, etc. where found. One of his close to finished works was a song that must have been dear to him—“Changes”. He’d reworked the lyrics several times and never quite seemed like it fit to release.
Changes uses that Hornsby chorus but tweaks it: Come on, come on/That's just the way it is/Things will never be the same/That's just the way it is/Ooh, yeah
2Pac is doing something brilliant here—and honestly, I’m not even sure if I’m getting at more than just the surface. Did you notice that the lyric is different? Pac says, “Things will never be the same” but Hornsby says “some things will never change”. I think 2Pac is saying that all around him things are changing. The streets are always unsettling. As he said in one lyric, “I’d love to go back to when we played as kids, but things changed, and that’s the way it is.”
And yet over all of this change he can still say, “I see no changes”. 2Pac spoke into the experience of living as a black man on the streets while there was a war on drugs. Without eliminating the reasons for the poverty, young black men were being jailed for trying to make a living in the only way they knew how. And yet, even here 2Pac—like a gospel preacher—speaks into the “sleazy way” they made a buck “sellin’ crack to a kid”. He’s not only blaming the system. He’s also lamenting black-on-black crime.
Things are changing and yet nothing is changing. At the end of the day, in 2Pac’s mind he still has to “stay strapped” and he can’t rest. In a chillingly prescient line he says:
'Cause I always got to worry 'bout the pay backs
Some buck that I roughed up way back
Comin' back after all these years
Rat-a-tat, tat, tat, tat, that's the way it is
That, sadly, is exactly how 2Pac died. I guess things never changed.
What does all of this have to do with Proverbs 19:7? It’s 2pac before 2Pac. Solomon is observing the plight of a poor man pursuing justice. Most see these verses as the background to a courtroom. The rich can “bribe” the courts—even if he doesn’t technically bribe them. His money will do the talking. By allowing the rich and successful person to “go free” there is an assumption that his favor will fall upon those who helped him out of a jam. The poor man has nothing to give.
When the poor man gets in a difficult situation everyone leaves him—even his own family. He looks around and sees nobody there to help, not even his brothers. He’s all alone. That third line (which is rare in Proverbs to have a third line) is difficult to translate in Hebrew. But I think it best to understand it as something like, “The poor man’s words of persuasion are met with emptiness”. It doesn’t matter how right or persuasive he is—his words are rejected because of who he is.
As I step back from this I ask, “What’s the point of it?” Why give us this observation? It’s here that I go back to 2Pac. Why say something like “some things will never change”? That’s where the song ended. Is it just discouraging? Is he resigned to this? Is this him saying, along with Solomon, “Eat, drink, be merry for tomorrow we all die”? I don’t think so.
If I dare say it, he’s speaking similar to the prophets. They spoke not only of what is, but also what should be. By pointing these things out, even the discouragement that things will never change, there is a glimmer of hope. True despair is silent. But hope still asks the question. Despair has made the conclusion—but hope, even if a flicker of hope—can still say, “Is life worth living’ or should I blast myself?”
Again, that doesn’t sound hopeful at all. But it’s a subversive hope. And this Proverb is doing something similar. The poor man doesn’t get justice. Rarely is he going to win out in court. The cards are stacked too far against him. His words are met with emptiness. And yet he keeps trying for justice here. But ultimately—and this is what I think 2Pac never entirely understood—there is a better day coming. There is a better story to be told. The moral arc of the universe does bend toward justice. But it’s a justice only found in Christ—and it’s a justice that is soaked in mercy. God does hear your cry and someday they will be answered, fully and finally.
Some things will never change.
Well, not entirely. Christ will never change. And because of that truth—somehow and someday everything will change.