The song Hollywood is an ironically happy tune about how a life spent chasing after glamour, fame, money, sex, drugs and beauty is a wasted life.

Over the last four months I’ve been living in a small apartment in Asia. Just a couple of days ago, at a college university, a young, bright-eyed boy stood up to ask , “Is America really like the movies depict it to be?” Hmmm.. Is it? Is America truly a place where really young girls hook up with really good looking guys and somehow never get pregnant?! A place where people stay pretty and all of their problems are solved after an hour and forty-five minutes? A place where everyone has money and dances and drinks and drives awesome cars and get by just fine without God?

Maybe in some parts of town.. but not where I grew up. The America that I know looks more like this.. The girl gets pregnant and drops out of high school as she struggles to make ends meet for perhaps the rest of her life. The good looking boys who squandered away all their weekends on Bourbon Street are now still living at home with their parents and pushing 24. The pretty girls are still pretty, but that doesn’t spare them from being insecure and ugly on the inside. Problems and consequences of sin are more likely to be passed on to the next few generations rather than solved in a few hours. And year after year, tearful phone calls will be made that some one else has over dosed on heroine and somas or a classmate has been killed in a car accident while leaving the bar. And though some would refuse to believe it, the stark reality is that no one is getting by just fine without God.

I think the bridge of this song says it best..

everyday you put on a show/ so maybe no one will know

that your heart has failed you

you spent your life on a lie / perhaps your money can’t buy

the love that God could show you