Intertribal Life Newspaper -

Country singer Toby Keith's song "God Love Her" and the video should be required material for all followers of Jesus.

The video portrays a romance between a preacher's daughter and a motorcycle-riding "bad boy" universally feared by all good "fundamentalist" Christian parents. After receiving heated disapproval from her father, the girl decides to run away with the boy.

The video starts with a white cross, and then moves to a wooden church in a country setting. Organ music plays softly. A pretty girl is alone inside the church popping gum and reading a Bible. The organ music stops and Toby Keith catapults into the picture.

Viewers next see the girl leaving the church and going outside. She walks over to "bad boy," reclining on his motorbike. The young man takes off his sunglasses and looks at the girl as she draws closer.

Holding the Bible to her chest, the preacher's daughter walks over to the young man who has now gotten off the bike. Viewers have already heard Toby sing the words, "Just a girl born in Dixie washed in the blood and raised on the banks of the Mississippi mud. She always had a thing about fallin' in love with a bad boy."

The young woman drops, or perhaps throws, the Bible down on the ground, and "bad boy" runs after her. They embrace somewhat seductively, and the viewer is left to imagine what happens next.

The scene shifts to the girl's horrified preacher father throwing open the doors of the church with an expression of unbridled horror on his face, and then "bad boy" rides away. However, the preacher's daughter runs after her love, and joins him on his bike.

The video shows them riding initially carefree to California. Then Toby sings, "My gypsy life started taking its toll and the fast lane got empty and out of control, and just like an angel she saved my soul from the devil."

The Bible is back in the picture, and the next thing viewers see is a young man who's bad no more. He's now reading the Bible and things are starting to change for the better.

Toby sings, "She holds tight to me and the Bible on the back seat of my motorcycle."

Meanwhile, preacher dad is shown back in his small church where apparently nothing has changed. He is still there "preaching to the choir," while mom gazes dispiritedly into the distance.

The video ends with them still riding, but a look of fulfillment on their faces.

Why Christians Need a Song Like This

I so appreciated both the lyrics of this song and the video. Why? Because it's so much more realistic than a lot of Christian music, and I believe better reflects our struggles as human beings as we live out our life on a daily basis.

While some online reviewers were disturbed about some of the scenes in the video, many people at one site I looked at agreed with me. One person wrote, "I love this song and the video. It's my story exactly."

Another person spoke my thoughts, writing "The message is good. People walk away from God but they find their way back ... I loved it, and a small walk away from God does not mean all is lost. She found God again ... what a great story."

I couldn't agree more!

Why the Preacher's Daughter Ran Away: My Take

As I watched the video, I wondered why the preacher's daughter ran away. Perhaps it was because her father preached what I have begun to call "The Gospel of No," a lifestyle of condemnation with all rules and none of the life-changing freedom originally intended by Jesus.

After all, if you ask people what comes to mind when they think of Christians, you might be shocked at the results. Here's some of what I suspect you may hear.

"Christians? They're those people who are against everything. They think they're right and everyone else is wrong."

"Christians? They hate homo-sexuals and people who have abortions."

"Christians? Oh, they're those people on TV who are always begging for money. With everything I've seen about them on the news recently, I think they're all crooks and hypocrites."

Somehow there seems to be a huge disconnect between the Jesus of the Bible and what His followers are known for today.

While we complain about the way we're profiled by the media, is the coverage really unfair? Perhaps we're suffering the effects of our own shortsighted interpretation of the gospel, as well as the strident, angry discourse dispensed by those individuals and groups whom the media believe speak for us.

For example. Maybe some of you will be horrified about some of the scenes portrayed in Toby Keith's video, portraying it as a perversion of the gospel, while failing to realize the message of God's love and redemption which it carries to hundreds of thousands of people who never go near the doors of a church.

Am I endorsing Toby Keith as consistently portraying a message that should be welcomed by Christians? Absolutely not! Do I believe that God could be using this video and song lyrics in some way? Most certainly!

I think it's fair to say that evangelical Christians (of which I am one in the sense that I hold to a literal interpretation of the Bible) are often not known as the dispensers of love and compassion. As a result, we're often not necessarily the first people to whom the hurting turn for help.

In our haste to condemn everything with which we don't agree, we have many times failed to offer any solutions for the issues we criticize.

Over the last few years I've had a spiritual epiphany as I've come to realize that rather than being defined for what we are against, we should be known for what we stand for.

Here are some examples. Christians should be the leaders in compassionate assistance for the troubled children of ministers, the disenfranchised, and the hungry and homeless.

And when people whom we try to help don't behave in a societally acceptable manner, rather than writing them off and congratulating ourselves for being Biblically correct, we should try to dig deeper into their circumstances to see what issues they are dealing with that are causing them to act inappropriately.

As Christians, we should also be in the forefront of the battle against AIDS and be known as comforters of those who are so afflicted.

On the world scene, we should also recognize that while we have a biblical obligation to love Israel and its people, we must also remember our brothers and sisters in Jordan and other Middle Eastern countries.

As a character said in the John Grisham novel "The Appeal," Pastor Ott "believed and taught that poverty and injustice were more important social issues than abortion and gay rights, but he was careful with his politics ... Ott considered (the entire town) to be his mission, and no one would go hungry, homeless or sick if he could possibly prevent it. Not on his watch, and his watch never ended."

Sometimes preachers' daughters run away with bad boys, people have abortions, get involved with gay rights and become homeless because of tragedies that they've experienced, or needs that haven't been addressed in their lives.

If we begin addressing these issues, we just might end up convincing people that God loves "bad boys" and disillusioned preachers' daughters, and that Christians really do bring "good news," not just the gospel of no.

© 2013 Assist News Service. Used with permission.

Jeremy Reynalds is Senior Correspondent for the ASSIST News Service, a freelance writer and also the founder and CEO of Joy Junction, New Mexico's largest emergency homeless shelter, http://www.joyjunction.org His newest book is "A Sheltered Life."