By Colby Malsbury

 

GREAT MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH:

70 AD – the destruction of the Temple and the ushering in of the final judgment upon Jewry.

451 – the Council of Chalcedon codifies Christian orthodoxy for one and all times.

1054 – the permanent schism between the Catholic West and the Orthodox East.

1517 – Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg church door.

2019 – Kanye West says that Christianity is ‘lit’, or something.

What, too soon? Well, I’m sure Ye will settle for being included as a footnote in this historiography. He is a humble sort, after all.

Yes, friends and neighbors, it’s time to get the less ascetic pew-warmers together for a spirited (and funky) rendition of ‘Bringing in the Sheaves’, because that A-list celeb of A-list celebs Kanye West has seen fit to publicly acclaim Christ. Of course, for a person of his stature (and color), no mere humble smiting of the breast and a tearful ‘I am a sinner in need of Justification’ will suffice. What could his label’s marketing department possibly do with that? Nay, far more appropriate to Ye’s persona for him to take the stage at a series of high profile metro area hip-hop concerts and bray his new allegiance into a microphone to the mesmeric cheers of thousands of his accolades, in a display not unlike the Ephesians’ bellowing forth their strange libations to Diana. The fact that this shameless self-promotion just happens to cohencide with the release of his new Christian-themed album Jesus is King – not to mention the accompanying IMAX documentary featuring performances of some of the album’s most commercial tracks – should give the discerning Christian pause, as these two media products are not something one can slap together in a month or so, if we take the timeline of his sudden but ‘intense’ conversion at face value. Well, thank heavens at least the androgynous man-child pastor Adam Tyson, who holds a degree from the Calvinist Master’s Seminary and has the fruitiest hairstyle outside of a roadshow production of The Birdcage, was on hand to deliver a valedictory welcome to the faith Ye’s way at a Detroit concert, or I might have cause to doubt the sincerity of this whole spectacle.

Or, if it hasn’t been made obvious, I already doubt this entire charade.

You’ll never in a million years guess where I first heard this joyful news. That’s right…that Armchair Amoeba of All Astuteness Marcus Pittman, whose Facebook post of September 28 at 1:58 AM (a Saturday – guess he must attend the late afternoon service at his church) reads in full:

Hey guys, I think God is doing something. I’m buying Kanye Wests album and I don’t buy music. #JesusIsKing

…and sounding no more substantive than an FB ad for the Snuggie that pops up in the news feed. To be no respecter of persons in regard to salvific matters appears not to apply when said penitent has been heard of by more than three or four people. That ethos is trebly on display in an appalling article published by the once refreshingly contrarian Pulpit & Pen, purporting to be a ‘cautiously optimistic’ analysis of West, but in reality barely able to contain its underlying attitude of ‘Reeeee!!! This is sooo exciting!!!!’ Said article takes on a tiresome ‘do not judge!’ editorial stance and has the chutzpah to include the proclamation ‘If we really believe in the sovereignty of God and his eternal self-sufficiency, we should not care or consider that Kanye is a celebrity with a mass following who is worth a quarter billion dollars.’ Well, gee, Pulpit & Pen – that being the case, why are you wasting valuable time reporting on what you admit to be a non-issue? But the answer is obvious. Pittman, whoever penned this disgusting P&P effervescence, and the rest of Team Hipster are first and foremost libertarian in thought and deed. Rap is their music of choice, as they pathetically perceive it to be the pinnacle of libertarianism, dedicated as it is to the Nevada trifecta of bling, ho’s, and smack, carpeted over with a presupposition of ‘eff Whitey’s authority’. Ergo, if they be Christian, they must try to shoehorn tenets of the Gospel into such at all cost. Worked well for Lecrae all those years until he dropped the ‘Christian’ bit to fly like an eagle. Or a raven, at any rate.

‘Well, how dare you!’ say a bunch of enthusiasts with the temperament and charm of Greta Thunberg. ‘You are not the Heart-Knower! Can you not give Ye the benefit of the doubt until he shows himself otherwise?’ It’s safe to presume that these people inevitably pick out the most rotten apples whenever they go grocery shopping. Are we not permitted to test West’s fruit, presumably because to do so would be ‘racist’? Why does he get a free pass? Paul was initially greeted with severe trepidation by the Christian community immediately after his Damascene conversion, and he makes it clear that this skepticism was entirely justified in his epistles. Likewise, when Nathanael followed Philip out to meet Jesus after first hesitating over whether any good could come out of Nazareth, did Jesus say to him ‘O ye of little faith’ or ‘Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile’? And what are we to make of the demon-possessed damsel who followed Paul and his cohorts about hollering that they were ‘the servants of the Most High God’, which shew unto us the way of salvation’ (Acts 16:17)? You would think that would be the final word on taking mere words unleavened with Christian acts at their face value, but the church values credulity above all other virtues these days, so I suppose not. Wait….what am I talking about, ‘these days’? Gullibility has been a thorn in the church’s side for far too long now. Considering the egalitarian prattle they have inflicted upon us as Gospel truth, they sure seem to be prone to hierarchical tendencies in enthusing about the ‘conversions’ of big names that later turn out to be facile. Remember when Jane Fonda publicly affirmed Christ upon her divorce from moneybags Ted Turner? Well, turns out that her regeneration was no more than some kind of vaguely-hallucinogenic awe at ‘the force outside her’, or some such BS, to the point that today she says that she follows ‘Christianity with an asterisk‘. In other words, she’s just another acolyte of the cult of Lilith. Or, going even further back, remember when pornographer Larry Flynt alleged to take on the Mantle, and displayed his new-found faith by turning Hustler into a porno mag infused with blasphemous imagery, and convinced Jimmy Carter’s evangelist sister that he was the real meal deal? Once God punished him for his impiety by confining him to a wheelchair for life, that facade sure faded away in one heck of a hurry, didn’t it? Compare these false proclamations with that of Kirk Cameron, who certainly has not reaped any rewards and adulation from the world at large from his profession of faith, yet has retained such for many years now. On the basis of that, it becomes apparent that his was a genuine regeneration, though his continued adherence to the most vacuous strain of dispensational eschatology is another serious problem entirely. Point being: Ye’s seeming insistence that everyone take him very, very, very seriously as a Christian right out the gate seems more than a little presumptuous.

It seems all the more presumptuous when one considers just how many years Ye spent immersed in the Cryptocratic matrix that has a stranglehold upon the music industry in general, and the rap industry in particular. He’s a big enough fish in that pond that if he hollers ‘Jump!’ producers and distributors respond with ‘How high?’ Have you heard him issue a public demand that Def Jam records immediately recall all outstanding copies of his sacrilegious 2013 album Yeezus, for example? I certainly haven’t. And I don’t know what Christian would want this putrid thing blithely floating around on the collectors’ vinyl circuit to be on their conscience:

Further commentary from me on this disgusting cover would be superfluous. ‘OK, yeah, it’s bad, but that was the old man! You can’t expect a babe in Christ to get everything right from day one!’ No, but I do expect a new Christian to not repeat his past arrogant amorality. Has Ye done so? Well, let’s take a gander at the poster art for his Jesus is King IMAX film tie-in:

Wherein we observe the legendarily egomaniacal Mr. Ye prominently featured above a crowd of robed devotees beholding his visage with awe – including splayed hands in his direction – in a manner very reminiscent of the disciples attending to Jesus’s sermon on the mount. Is it a less explicit bit of Messianic usurpation than the Yeezus cover? Certainly. But wouldn’t a newly humble Ye be anxious to distance himself from all that appears even the slightest bit unpropitious, as a beginning atonement for his past blasphemy? ‘That photo shoot was beyond his control.’ I seriously doubt that, but even so he was very much in control when he recently uttered a trademark vain boasting that he was the greatest human artist who has ever lived, and that he’s all but going to use that as a platform when he runs for president in 2024 – his victory is immanent, I have no doubt. Not the most sincere-sounding change of heart I’ve ever run across, but a bunch of twerps who administer one of the five dozen lame Reformed meme FB pages will be able to set me aright in my grievous error, I’m sure.

Well, golly – if faith without works is dead, surely we must perceive some sort of evidence of the presence of Spiritus Sanctus upon Ye. What about his goony-bird family? Has he taken on the role of a Christian patriarch among them? Well, I see immediately after his acceptance of Calvinist (I guess) theology, Kim Kardashian saw fit to get herself and their children baptized in the Armenian Orthodox Church. I would say that’s kind of dropping the ball on your headship duties, Ye – unless you believe that, as she now perceives Christ’s nature to be one syncretic union of the divine and human, you two can build a ‘purer’ marriage under some form of Miaphysitism us mere mortals are not privy too? I suppose Ye did voice some muted trepidation over his wife’s proclivity towards sultry dress, but ‘muted’ is the correct word – he was more saddened than indignant, so don’t expect Kim to be seen in Quaker-like attire any time soon. Personally, I’d be taking far more umbrage over the spectacle presented by my whatever-in-law ‘Caitlyn’ Jenner, but this isn’t my circus. He also hasn’t shown much inclination to object to her wearing decidedly demonic duds, such as her recent sporting of a blouse depicting the Egyptian dragon of Ouroboros devouring its own tail as a representation of pagan regeneration. Supermodels gonna supermodel, amirite, guys?

Ye being Ye, though, you just know he can’t keep silent on his newfound hobby forever. He’s gotta make a big production out of whatever he’s involved in. So he’s taken to offering a few token public pieties to ensure the base that he truly has forsaken all for Christ. He has enthused about the untold hours….well, minutes, at any rate….he has thus far delved into the Scriptures, even though he codifies his scholasticism with an admission that he’s not so much into this whole ‘book’ thing, dawg. I question any supposed Christian who willingly embraces general illiteracy – or has Kanye not stumbled across that little admonition to ‘study to shew thyself approved’ yet? He also politely asked that everyone who participated in the recording session for Jesus is King not engage in premarital sex for the duration of the project. LOL! Special K, you’ve been in the music biz for how long now? Is such a request likely to be granted? And what happens in the doubtless numerous ‘special’ relationships that grace Def Jam studios? ‘I’m sorry, Blake, but if you wish to sodomize Anton, I really must insist that you two tie the knot first. Thanks a bunch!’ And let us not overlook the shameless pandering campaign he is currently away upon, to reach as broad a ‘Christian’ base as possible. He has insisted that Mormons, Catholics and Bishop T.D. Jakes all share the same Gospel with him, and has very recently accepted an invitation from Joel Osteen to come visit his mega-temple and no doubt pop out a few sick riffs onstage. Thus, Ye has demonstrated the universalist unitarianism that makes for remarkably poor theology, but is essential to project an aura of Republican presidential ‘religiosity’. Maybe he is a shoo-in for 2024 after all.

Look, I don’t pretend to be privy to anyone’s inner workings of the soul. And Kanye West certainly is not outside of the parameters for salvation, should God so intend. If he has genuinely converted, I would gladly recant all I have written thus far. However, given his repellent past, the onus of proof of sincerity is solidly upon his shoulders. Would our ancestors have been likely to accept him with open arms as a beloved brethren, or would they have run him out of town on a rail, tarred and feathered and branded a charlatan? From his behavior post-conversion thus far, it would appear that his isn’t even the seed that sprang up immediately, because it had no root. Rather, it appears to be the visceral thrill of the experience and the adulation that naturally will follow from whatever he does – not dissimilar to the feeling he gets from having won yet another Grammy, and giving another speech in pidgin English that gets a bunch of white people in tuxes in the auditorium applauding like crazed seals. And is not the worldly-wise church community responding in like manner – all the more so because to question the legitimacy of a Negro’s epiphany would be considered the height of racism these days? How many sermons extolling ‘our newfound brother Kanye’ were preached from the pulpit coast to coast this past Sabbath? And the pro-Kanye memes that have been posted….my heavens, the cringeworthy family-friendly ‘dank’ memes! For the sake of posterity, here are a few representative examples:

Memes with a poor worldview are enough to turn even a dedicated TradCat into an iconoclast. But the Presbyterian disgust with idolatry goes right out the window when the chance to virtue signal presents itself. This is unsurprising at the best of times, but it should be even less so when we consider that earlier in the year Ye inspired great consternation by his out-of-the-blue endorsement for Trump. The Trump fan club is easily the most deluded batch of URLs you are ever likely to run across online – stubbornly oblivious to his numerous failings and blithely insistent that he is ‘one of us’. West plays to this exact same societal sub-strata. And as he can charm a packed stadium, so he is doing with this bunch. I shudder to think how their faith is going to be rocked should West repudiate the Christ he has amply demonstrated he has so little understanding of at present.

Should that unhappy situation manifest itself in future, if nothing else, we will have a myriad of Biblically apt puns to choose from:

Heard of Simony? Meet Simon Ye.

O Ye of little faith.

Ye are of your father, the devil.

Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

All right, I’ll stop now.