It Started With O-Dog
In the mid-nineties, John Singleton made a film called Menace to Society. The film centers around the protagonist Caine and his friend as they navigate life in the hood. I often return to this film because it, like Juice or Boys in the Hood, is somewhat of a classic within the genre of black film. Every time I see the film, there is but one question that lingers as I watch the final scene: What is Good News here? And this seemed to shape my thinking for a very long time, and it's still shaping my thinking at this point. The events of February 2012, the killing of Trayvon Martin, changed my viewpoint about everything that I've known about faith, about Jesus, about God, about truth. It all unraveled, mostly because nobody in pulpits was saying anything about this at all. White evangelical organizations fostered my initiation into Christianity. One of the first acts of business was destroying all my secular music, especially Hip Hop. Indoctrinated into believing that Hip Hop would lead me astray or that it would precipitate my wandering from God--cd burning became the first in a long line of superfluous sacrifices.
But in 2012, after Trayvon died, Hip Hip led me home. The urge to listen rekindled; why? Because the individuals that were supposed to be the voice Jesus had nothing to say about him or the litany of hashtags that would soon follow. I found a solitary solace in the despair and lament and rage that saturated hip-hop and fueled its prophets. It dawned on me; there was a preliminary question I need to answer before addressing my concern for Caine. What if Hip Hop could redeem the Gospel, rather than the Gospel redeeming Hip Hop?
Hip-hop is Parabolic
Jesus' Parables function as narratives without specific application. He would let the stories he told hang suspended in the air, accessible enough for any and all who were seeking truth to reach up and grasp. He would start with something with which we are all familiar, then expand into more profound things—employing seed and sand as vehicles for concepts that could take days, weeks, or a lifetime to comprehend. The teachings never really reach any resolution or conclusion, but the wisdom was immediately applicable. Hip Hop functions similarly because of what it brings to the table and what it forces us to ponder. I am of the contention that Hip Hop might be just what we need.
Western Evangelicalism- has not given us a box to hold things in tension, but tension is intrinsic to Hip Hop. Hip Hop is fearless in its embrace of ambiguity, and paradox is why so many people want nothing to do with Christianity.
Hip-hop is Non-Binary
It can not and will not be pigeonholed, making it an international phenomenon anyone can listen to, glean from, and partake of. Hip Hop forces all people to dance around notions of the sacred and profane. Hip Hop teaches us that these concepts are not so much arch enemies as strange bedfellows. Because hip hop is unflinchingly human, it reminds us that to be human is to have, at all times, the sacred and the profane coinciding within us. Contemporary society abounds with suspicion about binaries because we have learned that that's just not how we are as people. The reality is that this is not novel, and it is not foreign to theological exploration; it is just uncomfortable, and it exposes the malevolent struggle for power we have so long tried to hide. It is not right to say to the world that Christianity does not have space for that when God has given the Divine dealings with personalities like King David as a "witness to the people."
Hip-Hop is Unbothered by Uncertainty.
At the end of Menace to Society, Caine says: "It's funny like that in the hood sometimes. I mean you never knew what was going to happen on when." In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says,
"do not worry about tomorrow; today has enough trouble of its own."
Life is inductive. There is simply no other way to do it. No one is more acquainted with this truth than the least of these. Every waking moment we clamor for invulnerability at the expense of entering the kingdom. Truth be told, invulnerability has increasingly crept into our conception of faith. We convince ourselves that objective certainty is safe when, in reality, it is impossible to possess much like invulnerability. One does not necessarily need to have objective certainty in order to have faith or hope. No, the only necessary preliminary to Faith, Hope, and Love is vulnerability.
Life is uncertain. Hip-hop so readily embraces that fact. And that's what hip-hop can bring back to the faith for us. Terrible things happen, but good things happen too. Christianity has the capacity to and is armed to teach us this truth if we will only let it.
Hip-hop rejects hypocrisy, and it's Anti-Empire.
Hip-Hop Celebrates Loyalty, Sacrifices, Restitution, Honesty & Gratitude
These are the ingredients to what I call "hood ethic." There is a code in the neighborhood, and the biggest mistake we have made in the Church is to conceptualize the inner city as rogue and rowdy. We do not know how to engage because we approach these places intending to impose an ethic that is foreign to the context. Instead of learning, celebrating, and working with what is already there, we attempt to plant a seed in soil that will reject it. The battlefield in Christianity today is not doctrine; its ethics.
Hip-hop finds joy, purpose, and pathways amid suffering and pain.
Americans have been discipled in a curriculum of pain avoidance. Hip Hop does not go around pain; it goes through it. There is presumptuous confidence in the nearness of God within both the culture and the genre. This confidence is the guide through the dark valley and the stony road that produced the Hip and the Hop in the first place.
We believe in a man who is also God. Moreover, we believe that the kingdom is right here but also coming. We believe that God is there and here. Our entire faith is a paradox. There is an awareness of the presence of God even within a culture that we would say is so "just un-Godly." Psalm 139 proclaims, even if we make our bed in the depths, God is there. In many ways, American Evangelicalism has lost sight of the things that are intrinsic to our faith, but God will not be without a witness. And this is what hip-hop can do for us.