So many evangelicals doubted the sincerity of Kanye West’s exuberant embrace of Christianity on his new, long-awaited album, JESUS IS KING, that he incorporated their criticism into a track. “They’ll be the first one to judge me,” he raps in “Hands On,“ “Make it feel like nobody love me.”
However, the criticism found on social media, in pulpits, and on television of West’s very public faith belies the reality that most people’s religious journeys are nonlinear, whether they are famous or not. In fact, the faiths of West and two of the album’s main contributors perfectly demonstrate the Biblical parable of the sower found in Matthew 13.
Rappers Gene and Terrence Thornton rode a wave of fame as Clipse until they parted ways in 2009. This wasn’t due to a typical behind-the-music tale of acrimony and pettiness. Rather, the brothers, who went by the monikers Malice and Pusha-T, split when Malice committed his life to God.
Malice’s road to Damascus was rocky. In 1996, he and some friends were drinking in the middle of the street, a location chosen because of one guy’s ankle monitor restrictions. A stranger named Alberta Wilson stopped and told them that God had a plan for their lives. Malice made fun of the meddling woman. How did a virgin have a baby? Though he was drunk, he was still incredulous. He tried to dismiss her until another day.
“You might not have another day,” she said. Even though he was seeing double, he and his friend held hands in the middle of the street and drunkenly accepted Jesus Christ. When he sobered up, however, he didn’t immediately walk the straight and narrow. Instead, he wound up selling crack cocaine, cheating on his wife, and smoking a lot of pot as the rap duo Clipse continued to earn critical acclaim, including a Grammy nomination and tours with stars such as 50 Cent and Jay-Z. Only after Malice feared he’d contracted HIV did he finally relent and accept God’s call on his life.
When Malice read Ephesians 4:31, which instructs Christians to put away malice, bitterness, and strife, he transformed into “No Malice” and decided to walk away from his rap lifestyle.
The brothers announced solo careers.
No Malice rapped about God and redemption in comparatively small venues. PushaT signed with Kanye’s label and went on to significant fame and wealth. He rapped about God, but in a markedly different way. His track “New God Flow begins”, “I believe there’s a God above me, I’m just the god of everything else.” His divine flippancy and drug-soaked lyrics took him to the top of the charts.
Though Kanye wanted to bring No Malice back into their creative loop, the latter’s conscience wouldn’t allow it. “As far as me facilitating anything that brings death, destruction, and demise,” No Malice told XXL magazine, “I’m not going to do that.”
Meanwhile, Kanye was having his own brush with the divine. His 2004 track Jesus Walks included the lyric, “God show me the way because the devil trying to break me down.” On his 2013 album Yeezus, Kanye favorably compared himself to Jesus in a lyric reminiscent of Pusha-T’s: “I know he’s the most high, but I am a close high.”
On 2016’s Life of Pablo, the singer compared himself to the Apostle Paul (San Pablo in Spanish) and included songs such as “Ultralight Beam.” That track includes two prayers: a child praying “we don’t want no devils in this house” and gospel singer Kirk Franklin’s petition, “Father, this is a prayer for everybody who feels they’re not good enough … for everybody who feels they’re too messed up.” Chance the Rapper chimed in with an allusion to the “pillar of salt” from Genesis 19:26.
On a different track called “FML”, the Weeknd expressed a sentiment from Romans 7:15. Whereas Paul wrote, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do,” the Weeknd put it this way: “I always f–k my life up.”
“This is a gospel album,” Kanye insisted at the time. “A whole lot of cursing on it, but it’s still a gospel album.”
Evangelicals balked at Kanye’s expression of faith, noting that his personal life didn’t reflect the sort of holiness normally associated with a Christian walk of faith. But on JESUS IS KING, Kanye’s conversion, which had only been incrementally obvious, took a more dramatic turn. He considered dropping rap altogether, saying he had no idea how to incorporate his engulfing faith into his music.
He went to his old friend, No Malice, for advice. With credits on the albums Selah, Closed on Sunday, and Hands On, the Thornton brothers were musically reunited.
The spiritual journeys of these three men might have confused cultural observers, but their paths can be easily understood in light of Matthew 13.
In the parable of the sower, a farmer seems to sow seeds indiscriminately. Some of the seed falls on a path with no soil, some falls on rocky ground with little soil, some on soil that contains thorns, and some on rich, fertile soil. Jesus explains that the seed represents the Word of God and the ground represents the different conditions of the heart.
The lives of these three rappers demonstrate the baffling sovereignty of God in the process of salvation and the sometimes winding paths people take. Though the seed is sown to all, God alone controls the condition of the soil and therefore the receptivity toward the message. That means some people receive the gospel message happily, but don’t last, because their faith has no root. Others hear the Word but “the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful.” But Jesus explains that the one “who hears the word and understands” will produce a crop.
Christianity is not genetic, as evangelical theologian Carl F. H. Henry said in Dr. Russell Moore’s book Onward. Messy conversions shouldn’t surprise us. “The leaders of the next generation might not be coming from the current evangelical establishment,” Henry said. “They are probably still pagans.”
A faith journey is a “journey” because it takes a person from one place to another. In contrast to the elite cynicism and mockery seen online and on social media, Christians should be inspired to see one of the most famous people in the world submitting himself to God in such a public way. But they so fear that the rocks and roots will inevitably choke Kanye’s faith, they themselves have become the rocks and the roots.
If the parable of the sower is true, an outside observer can’t predict the spiritual destiny of those who proclaim Christ or those who actively oppose Him. Sometimes, people give their faith up. Sometimes, it’s a three-steps-forward-two-steps-back process that might look clumsy, especially if people wrestle with God in public. Sometimes, people appear to be God-haunted for a period of time before they convert. Other times, the post-conversion sanctification process takes longer than many people believe it should.
Moore took this concept even further in a 2016 statement that now seems prescient: “The next Billy Graham might be passed out drunk in a fraternity house right now. The next Charles Spurgeon might be making posters for a Gay Pride March right now. The next Mother Teresa might be managing an abortion clinic right now.” He also noted, “The next Charles Wesley might be a misogynist, profanity-spewing hip-hop artist right now.”
Like all of us, Kanye, No Malice, and PushaT have meandering faith paths made of different soils. The response should not be finger wagging, an earnest yet sober hope that all of our paths will take us through Christ to God.
Nancy French is a New York Times best-selling author.
