Kanye Believe It?

What is the Christian response to celebrity conversions? Largely the same as the Christian response to all conversions.

Ye Will Know Them By Their Fruits

True conversion is evidenced by good fruit over the long haul. This means that, for us mortals, there is no way to know for sure if a conversion is true or false. This explains every major pastoral apostasy ever. The more fruit the tree produces, the more accurately we can judge the root, but at the end of the day only God knows the heart. (Matt. 7:16)

This reality is intensified by the proliferation of fruit that is common early on in false conversions. (Matt. 13:3-9)

Ye Shall Incur A Stricter Judgment

A particular danger with celebrity conversions is the easy metamorphosis of cultural authority into theological authority. Ye may be a veteran musician or author or actor or politician, but if ye have just been born again then ye are still a baby Christian. As such, ye should not be seen as a Christian leader, but as a cultural leader who has become a Christian. Church authority belongs to qualified and appointed elders.

Believers who have shown themselves faithful also earn the right to be considered sources of wisdom. Even in these cases the Berean approach is necessary. New believers can have very good and true things to say, and no one should despise their youth; at the same time, extra special care must be given to evaluate their teachings and check them against Scripture. (Titus 1:5-9, 2:3-5)

This should give us pause as we see Kanye leading “Sunday Services.” I don’t know anything about these services. I only know enough to say that leading a Sunday Service sounds awful close to pastoring, and the Bible gives specific regulations on who should be filling that office, and on how they should get there, and on how they need to be involved in the lives of their people. What Kanye is doing falls more under the category of being an evangelist… but we need to be careful not to conflate the two.

I’m not saying that God can’t use these things for His glory and to bring real revival. He can, and I believe that He is. But we must do His work His way according to His Word. These folks who come to Christ at a Kanye concert- amen and hallelujah!- need to be plugged into a Bible-teaching church, brought under the authority of a Biblically qualified pastor, and bound in the embrace of the body of Christ. Jesus told us to make disciples, not simply converts, and the warnings about false conversion are all the stronger when the conversion happens amongst the lights, music, and emotion of a concert.

The Spirit of God can indeed bring thousands to Christ, and that is what we are praying for. We must not be cynical. But we must be circumspect. Dim lights and a good beat are a poor substitute for a true encounter with the Holy One, but the two can be confused all too easily.

This should also give pause to folks like Kanye- cultural leaders who come to Christ must realize their position of authority and humbly pay heed to the warning of the apostle James.

Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment. James 3:1, NASB

Creating art that claims to be Christian clearly falls into the above category, let alone leading worship services; we would be well served to pray for Kanye as he seeks to use his medium for the glory of Christ, that God would guide him, keep him humble, and give him wise counselors.

What If Ye Went Out From Us?

What if it all is a money-making sham? What if in a few years Kanye comes out as an apostate? Will we regret having embraced him as a brother?

There is always plenty of time to condemn apostates after they apostatize. Of course, none of us can predict that. For all we know, Kanye could be faithful to Christ until death, and the beloved pastor of 40 years at the Reformed church down the street could run off with his secretary.

They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us. 1 John 2:19, NAS

In other words, we don’t know if they aren’t one of us until they aren’t. If they aren’t, then we can call them out on it. Unless and until they aren’t, they are, and as such, we would be foolish to hold them at arms length on the chance that they might one day leave the faith.

The possibility of someone walking off into hell is a good reason to hold them tighter, not to push them away.

However, to assume the worst- to put your money on this whole thing being a sham- to have a cynical perspective on the salvation of someone who was an enemy of God- this isn’t a Biblical notion. Love bears all things and believes all things. We have no right to glare with eyes askance, scrutinizing every move, waiting for the inevitable misstep, and then leaping up with a satisfied “Aha!”

If we are going to be skeptical of radical conversions then we probably would have had a hard time embracing the apostle Paul. God can and does bring the dead to life, and it is His saving goodness that gives us reason to rejoice, not the track record of those whom He saves. Let us have a care lest God send the revival we were asking for and we send it back because it didn’t look like the picture on the website of our own expectations.

In fact, it should be no surprise. Jesus went to the lost and the poor and the outcasts. We look at Hollywood and see a community dead-set, literally hell-bent on fighting against all that is good and true and right. And they are. But they are also lost as a street lamp in an Arizona dust storm. They can’t figure out what boys and girls are. They live in a world with no meaning, no reality, no hope. They desperately need the Gospel. Remember, they aren’t the enemy; they’re just working for him.

Would it be any surprise that God would start a revival there, in the belly of the beast? Let us have a care lest we within the evangelical community, so carefully compromising, so comfortably pious, so faithful in our tithes of mint and cumin while neglecting the greater matters of love and mercy and justice and obedience- let’s define all those by the Word of God, and not by that of Marx, if you please- let us have a care lest the Kanye in the corner, not even lifting his eyes up to heaven, goes home justified, and we do not.

It would be no surprise that God would turn on the lights where it is dark, and not among those who are busily infatuated with the faint glows of their own virtue-signaling righteousness. And I’m not talking about the left. I’m talking about the conservative Republican church, here… you know, the house where the judgment starts. (1 Pet. 4:17)

So long as Kanye continues to speak and to walk in the truth- something for which we must not only watch carefully but also pray fervently!- at the end of the day, we must say with Paul:

What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in this I rejoice. Phillipians 1:18, NAS

Do Ye Like The Music?

Just a quick note, as someone who has written about the objective communicating power of music; I listened to most of Kanye’s album last week, and I am still of the same conviction that God designed music in such a way that it communicates objectively. I’m not a major fan of the musical style, and if Ye and I were old friends shooting the breeze I would ask him if rap music is truly the most fitting way to communicate the holiness of God.

But that’s a downstream issue. Right now, he’s getting the upstream issues right. His lyrics are solid, to the point of putting mainstream CCM to shame- I was more inspired to be a Godly father by listening to Closed On Sunday than by hours of positive and encouraging redundancy found on the average Christian radio station- I’m not too worried about the music. God can strike a straight lick with a crooked stick.

And I’m applying that to myself, first, and only then to anybody else.

Praise God for grace.

Ye Are Now My Brother

With all those caveats in place… it’s time to party.

I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. Luke 15:7, NASB

Unless and until his fruit shows otherwise, I’m seeing a lot of good fruit from Kanye West. I have no reason to doubt his profession, and I am thrilled to see him praising Christ, speaking truth, and annoying leftists. This is the kind of saving miracle we pray for.

I still can’t let my kids read his Twitter feed or listen to his interviews; sanctification is a long-term process, and it doesn’t appear to have hit the unwholeshome words stage for Kanye yet. There will be many other nits we could pick as our new brother learns what it means to be a Christian. But let’s be honest. Sanctification is a process for all of us. We can sit around and comment on the grave wrappings that are still clinging to Lazarus, or we can jump and shout that he is alive.

I, for one, am jumping and shouting.

At the end of the day, I’m proud to call this man my brother in Christ. I rejoice to see the Spirit of God doing such a public work in bringing another dead heart to life. I’m praying for Kanye, that God will keep him faithful and give him strength to face the pressures of the world, the flesh, and the devil, which are going to come pecking after the Gospel seed in his heart.

And I’m joining my brother in proclaiming the truth.

Jesus is King.

#JesusIsKing #KanyeWest #Rap #Revival