The Material Girl Flirts With the Metaphysical

One thing has always been consistent for the Material Girl turned Metaphysical Girl: her penchant for controversy. In the 1980s and '90s, Madonna's headline-making behavior was usually linked to her sexual exhibitionism. Now it stems from her involvement with the mystical Jewish sect called Kabbalah. She recently told Rolling Stone, "I've made a career out of being controversial, so now even my ... spiritual life [is] freaking people out."

Given Madonna's increased attention to spiritual concerns, then, listening to her latest No. 1 album, Confessions on a Dance Floor, is an interesting experience.

What Would Wally Listen To?
Track after track of electronica-flavored beats recall Madonna's dance-floor roots. Their lyrics, though, are harder to pin down, vacillating between spiritual searching and ... surprisingly sappy love songs. The first single, "Hung Up," for example, would have been right at home in the 1950s: "Every little thing that you say or do/I'm hung up/I'm hung up on you/Waiting for your call/Baby, night and day/I'm fed up/I'm tired of waiting on you." Even Wally and the Beav could have appreciated this tune, I think.

Similarly saccharine sentiments pop up on "Get Together," which begs, "I really, really wanna be with you/ ... I hope you feel the same way too." And "Forbidden Love" resembles the poetry of a love-struck teen: "Just one kiss on my lips/Was all it took to seal the future." All in all, there's a lot of schmaltz on this disc.

Lest you think Madonna is flirting with puritanism, however, she tosses one sexually charged thought into "Like It or Not" ("I'll be the garden, you'll be the snake/All of my fruit is yours to take"). And her trademark rebelliousness takes a bow on "I Love New York" ("If you don't like my attitude/Then you can F off"). She doesn't actually use the f-word but censors herself—which arguably constitutes restraint these days. A little later, she taunts, "New York is not for little p-ssies who scream." No restraint there.

Pentateuch Poetry; Eternity in Her Grasp
In contrast to those tracks are five that are at best Bible-based and at worst spiritually inquisitive. Twenty years ago nobody would have guessed that Madonna would one day sing about an Old Testament patriarch. Yet here she is doing it. She says she wrote "Isaac" while thinking about the story of Abraham's sacrifice (in Genesis 22), and her verses are interspersed with Hebrew chants: "Staring up into the heavens/In this hell that binds your hands/Will you sacrifice your comfort/Make your way in a foreign land?"

"How High" also plumbs existential questions as Madonna asks, "Does this get any better?/Should I carry on?/Will it matter when I'm gone?/Will any of this matter? ... I spent my whole life wanting to be talked about/ ... Was it all worth it?" Significant stuff from the woman whose claim to fame was once her dance moves and her lyrical ode to "cold, hard cash."

Sinner and Saint?
Madonna has relied upon religious imagery throughout her career. (Remember "Like a Prayer"?) The difference now is that she's taking spiritual things more seriously instead of just mocking them, even as she continues to blur the lines between secular and sacred. And that, it seems, is exactly what she wants. "Like It or Not" suggests, "You can call me a sinner/Or you can call me a saint/Celebrate me for who I am/Dislike me for what I ain't."

Madonna recently told USA Today, "I'm constantly trying to figure out what my place in the world is. That search was obviously instigated by the birth of my daughter. ... I woke up one day and thought, 'My god, I'm about to have a baby; how am I going to teach my child what the meaning of life is when I don't know myself?' If she asks why she's here, and who is God, or why are people suffering, I want to have answers. And I want to ask those questions, too."

I don't doubt the sincerity of Madonna's search for God. And for asking some significant questions on her CD without using it as a platform for pushing Kabbalah, she deserves credit. But fans should steadfastly resist the temptation to give her so much credit that they follow her lead. Kabbalah's Jewish roots lend it some superficial similarity with Christianity—which might even increase its appeal to those lacking spiritual discernment. At its heart, however, Kabbalah exalts a subjective, self-focused and even superstitious brand of spirituality that has no place for Jesus Christ.

I hope Madonna continues to grapple with her questions about the meaning of life. I pray that her quest leads her back to the true source of truth instead of Kabbalah's counterfeit light.