Dear Kanye,

Part of me is rolling my eyes that I’m even chiming in on this whole conversation. You’ll never read this, but I can’t keep sitting on my thoughts either, so here goes. I’m really enjoying the album, Jesus is King, and I’ve also enjoyed hearing about your recent conversion, but if I’m honest, all the surrounding conversations about it are tainting it for me a little.

Your coming to faith has caused a lot of folks to think about their own conversion experiences, including me, and I know that when I think about the days and months after I trusted in Jesus, they were a roller coaster of spiritual highs and lows, fervency and mistakes, figuring out what it meant to be a follower of Jesus. I hear a lot of that in Jesus is King, and it’s refreshing.

Whenever I think about what it means to be “born again”, I think about some of the same things that take place when we were born naturally. It’s beyond our control, it happens when it happens, and it’s not always a clear experience; but you’re alive, and that’s all you know. I also think about the fact that whenever we were born the first time, it was into a context and a set of circumstances that usually shape us for the better or for worse. Flourishing or broken households and relationships, planned or unplanned, traumatic or peaceful birth experiences. I think it’s sort of the same way with the new birth.

Kanye, you’ve been born into a context that’s rife with division, even among your new Christian siblings. It’s 2019 in Cancel Culture. People dismiss, cast out, cut off, and boycott other people over differences of opinion. Sometimes there’s a right and wrong perspective, but cancel culture doesn’t wait for a dialogue, it swiftly jumps to a conclusion, and it seeks a kind of sacrifice, atonement, repentance, without restoration; all in the name of cultural purity. Half of us are canceling the other half for something different every week and vice versa. I say all this because it’s not surprising that as a public figure with your own set of views, opinions, and now faith, you will - if not already - be canceled for one reason or another.

One look at Twitter and you’ll see that your conversion is being reviewed and received in two extremes by Christians and others. Some feel as though your recent conversion, coupled with some political statements you’ve made, is cause for championing you as the poster child for certain religious and political ideals; a hero with a platform to cancel the differing perspectives of the other side. While others villainize you because of this and suggest that your conversion, no matter how authentic or inauthentic, is only a colonized version of faith and you should therefore be canceled. Personally, I haven’t agreed with everything you’ve been saying politically, but I’m still calling you brother, rejoicing over your salvation, and I’m choosing to believe that you were brought to faith in King Jesus instead of being brought to faith in certain political ideals or a political party as King. So even if we have our differences, I don’t get to cancel you because Jesus doesn’t cancel you.

With that said, this doesn’t mean that there won’t be difficult conversations or even correction and rebuke in this family. We’re all influenced by things other than the gospel at times, and that gets in the way of our allegiance to King Jesus and shapes our interactions with each other. Just watch out for that. It’s a really easy trap to fall into. I think about Peter’s experience in Galatians 2. As family in the faith, we should be able to have these conversations without “canceling” each other altogether and still affirm the grace that we’ve received in Jesus.

Brother, another thing you should know about being born again in this context is this, everyone, Christian or not, either has a target on you or an agenda for you. You’ll be summoned to promote a tribe, an ideal, a party, a cause, and align your faith with an agenda; or you’ll be targeted, canceled, and called a bigot, a racist, a heretic, social justice warrior, intolerant, Marxist, told to “Go home”, or you might be canceled for just being silent. Its probably always been this way to some degree, but it’s hard in these streets; and it’s all probably gonna get really old, really quick. When it does, I’m praying that you would know that Jesus keeps you, brother; and He keeps all who trust in Him. The good news is that these circumstances don’t have to shape your new birth for the worse. The only reason we’ll be Christians in the next second or the next several decades is because of Jesus, and Jesus calls us to endure. So don’t feel like faithfulness to Jesus is always equal to faithfulness to the Christian culture. Sometimes they’ll overlap, but only Jesus has the power to save you and keep you saved.

So, I’m praying that you endure, not by your own power, but by God’s. Endurance is really difficult to do alone, so I’m also praying that you’d find a church; one that preaches the gospel and reminds you of Jesus’ Kingship over everything, including our lives; one that regularly reminds you of the grace that He gives to all kinds of people who trust in Him displayed through communion and baptism; and one that prays for you and your family, asks you the hard questions, and gives you the safety and love to think about your life deeply, repent of sin, and grow in the knowledge of Jesus.

Celebration?

Twenty years ago, your celebrity status coupled with your newfound faith would’ve had most folks acting as if Michael Jordan had joined the Vancouver Grizzlies. It would’ve been all about more relevance for Christianity in a culture that was kinda over it. But I’m not seeing much of that now. It’s almost as if nobody cares *about your actual conversion*, including Christians, for many different reasons. On the one hand, we’ve seen so many celebrity professions of faith that end up being hollow or false, and on the other hand several celebrity Christians (who appeared to be at the peak of Christianity) have been exposed to not actually believe what they professed, either by deconstructing their beliefs, moral failure, or just leaving the faith altogether. We’re wounded and heartbroken in one sense, and we’re hardened and callous to the miraculous work of conversion in another. Shoot, all the false professions and the fallen have me nervous about the sustaining of my own faith. If they weren’t real, who’s to say I am or that I won’t fall away? So Kanye, I can’t speak for everyone else, but man, I wanna believe that its real. I do believe. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hesitant and wincing in my soul a little bit. Forgive me. I’m just tired.

One More Thing…

To this day, I still skip “Jesus Walks” because they played it all the way out in 2004-2005.

Listening to Jesus is King reminded me a lot of your first album, The College Dropout. Prior to Jesus is King, TCD is the only other album of yours I actually listened to. It’s not because I didn’t like them, but TCD just resonated with me in a way no album ever had up to that point. I was a die-hard Jay-Z fan, and I didn’t think that any other album would ever come close to “The Blueprint”, but then three years later, College Dropout came out, and I still have it in rotation to this day.

I guess the album hit me in the way it did because I was actually a college dropout in 2004. I thought I didn’t need school. I wasn’t that great at it anyways, and I found myself working, not at the GAP, but at Office Max, singing “Spaceship” to myself and memorizing J.Ivy’s poetry verse from “Never Let Me Down”. Speaking of that song, it’s on my top 3 all-time. But in that song, you said this,

Swear I've been baptized 'least three or four times
But in the land where ****** praise Yukons and getting paid
It's gonna take a lot more than coupons to get us saved
Like it take a lot more than doo rags to get you waves

Thinking about these lines now just shows that something was happening way back then and brother, that was me, along with so many others who now call Jesus King. I bet in between TCD and Jesus is King you’ve probably tried scrubbing your hands 10,000 more times. I know I have. And as I think about my own story, the only reason I wasn’t baptized 10 or 12 times is because I was too scared to admit that my hands were as dirty as they were and I needed cleansing. But then the truth of the gospel that Jesus is King transformed me as well around that time. I hope you’ve truly found the One whose blood cleanses us from all sin, the One who identifies with us in baptism once and for all, Jesus - who went down into the waters of our judgment and death on the cross and was raised up into new life in His resurrection. He cleans and He saves.

Stay faithful to King Jesus, endure, and know that those He saves, He keeps.

May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. - Romans 17:5-7