SEEK YE FIRST

By Jack Kubinec

Playlist curated by Jack Kubinec and Zach Lee

When Kanye West released his ninth studio album, Jesus is King, this past October, it felt impossible that the same Kanye West who infamously released an album titled Yeezus (combining Kanye’s nickname, Yeezy, with Jesus) with a lead single titled “I Am a God” was now crooning lyrics like “I bow down to the King up on the throne / My life is his I’m no longer my own.” West is no stranger to paradox, though. Kanye insisted that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” on live TV, yet Kanye has recently been known to sport a “Make America Great Again” hat in support of the GOP’s more racially-problematic successor. Kanye now speaks proudly of bowing down before Jesus, yet he has generally built his career around his comically inflated ego. 

Despite Kanye’s larger-than-life persona, he is fundamentally unable to reconcile certain contradictions within himself. We connect with West's paradoxes, as all humans struggle with the dark knowledge that our actions will never truly match our beliefs. Humans have engaged in this struggle against our own inner contradictions for millennia -- since ancient Israel was rejecting judges quicker than a Republican Congress -- but the struggle against our contradictions can ultimately lead us to rejoice in the presence of God.

Kanye’s inherent contradictions are not lost on him, as the rapper has increasingly been exploring his paradoxical nature through his music in recent years. In 2016, Kanye’s tour had to be cut short as he was involuntarily put in a psychiatric ward, later admitting that he was addicted to opioids and had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. In 2018, while holed up at his ranch in Wyoming, Kanye suddenly released a 7-song album titled ye, after West’s nickname and the most common word in the Bible. The album cover shows a beautiful landscape with “I hate being Bi-Polar its awesome” [sic] scrawled overtop in reference to Kanye’s much-publicized diagnosis with bipolar disorder (in typical Kanye fashion, West apparently took the photo and made the album cover while in the car on his way to the album’s release party in Jackson Hole). 

The 23-minute EP is rich with analysis of West’s innate contradictions. The album begins with an anachronistic choir sample hearkening back to Kanye’s signature soulful sound from the early 2000s. Over the rich vocal background, Kanye laments that “the most beautiful thoughts are always beside the darkest” before telling his listener: “Today I seriously thought about killing you.” This immediate death threat is jarring and, needless to say, “I Thought About Killing You” has not become an aux cord favorite. 

But Kanye’s abrasive lyrics in the track provide a peek into the mind of 2020’s most enigmatic Christian. Later in the song, Kanye breaks the fourth wall and, in a matter of fact tone, tells his listener: “I think this is the part where I’m supposed to say something good to compensate it so it doesn’t come off bad / But sometimes I think really bad things.” Kanye West knows that his actions often out him as a hypocrite. He knows that his bravado is unable to hide his struggles. And above all, Kanye knows that his own mind is a dark place. But, instead of hiding from this darkness, Kanye exposes his own darkness to his listeners, outing himself as a deeply flawed man filled with contradictions. 

While Kanye’s confessed state of mind is shocking, we are all a little bit like Kanye. As humans, we often “think really bad things” that we dare not confess to anyone. We hold onto bitterness against others; we resent the success of others if it takes away from our glory; we lust after the things we can’t have; we find it hard to actually care about other people’s struggles. What’s more, when we do find an outlet for what goes on in our minds, we often try to “compensate” our thoughts so as to not, in the words of Kanye, “come off bad.” Dwelling on his inward depravity does not make the rapper’s recent exhortation for Christians to “Follow God” ring hollow, though, because Kanye’s introspection on ye is just as much a part of the Christian walk as his syrupy praise songs on Jesus is King. 

Struggling to understand our inner paradoxes can take our minds to dark places, but doing so does not make us worse in the eyes of God. Rather, God is pleased when his people wrestle with their inner paradoxes, as he shows in the bizarre moment when God consecrates the Israelites as his chosen people. In the book of Genesis, a man named Jacob finds himself wrestling with a man “until the break of day.” When Jacob’s opponent entreats him to be let go, Jacob refuses to do so until the man will tell Jacob his name. Hearing this, the wrestler tells Jacob that from then on he would be named “Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”[1] Jacob spent the night literally wrestling with God, and God responded by naming the nation of Israel after him. 

This highly symbolic passage bears direct comparison to Kanye’s faith walk. Jacob wrestled with God for an entire night out of a desire to know God’s name. Literally translated, the word Israel means to contend or wrestle with God. Similarly, Kanye wrestled with his “beautiful thoughts” and his “darkest” ones in making ye, and in doing so, he came to know God on Jesus is King. The implication is clear: those who God chooses, He also wrestles with.

As much as Christians want to be in perfect harmony with God (or, in the case of Jacob, to know His name), having a relationship with God can often feel like emotional wrestling. Yet, our wrestling in the dead of night is made worth it by the fact that when “the day has broken,” we will “have prevailed” in deepening our understanding of God. If ye shows Kanye wrestling with God in the dead of night, then Jesus is King shows Kanye celebrating in the morning as he realizes that he has “seen God” and “been delivered.” [2]

Kanye’s perceived separation from God feels very poignant in the opening track of ye, an album recorded during a period of lament where Kanye struggled with poor mental health and drug addiction. Two years later, Kanye found himself so overcome by the presence of God that he hastily released the gleeful Jesus is King. It is difficult to rectify Kanye’s journey from deep lament and nihilism on ye to overwhelming joy on Jesus is King without taking very seriously the idea that Kanye’s life has been radically changed by God. 

As any hardcore Kanye fan will be quick to point out, though, Jesus is King is far from Kanye’s best work. The songs feel incomplete, the lyrics are often underdeveloped, and the mixing makes the album sound as if it was recorded in a tin can. After spending over a year on his unreleased album Yandhi, Kanye’s sudden conversion to faith in Christ spurred him to release Jesus is King after working on the album for less than two months, resulting in lyrics like “Closed on Sunday / You my Chick Fil A” that are corny enough to make a youth pastor wince. Kanye, a perfectionist known for routinely missing album release dates to continue tinkering with his music, felt as if he could not release Jesus is King quickly enough.

Responding to joy with unhinged celebration is so deeply human that we see it both today and in ancient Israel – this time with Israel's King David. After Jacob wrestled with God and created the nation of Israel, God remained with the Israelites through the Ark of the Covenant, a gold-plated wooden box that contained the stone tablets of the ten commandments and would one day terrorize Indiana Jones. The Israelites eventually lost the Ark in a military battle -- a devastating loss for God’s chosen people. When the Ark was miraculously returned to Jerusalem, King David went outside dressed in a plain white robe and “danced before the Lord with all his might.” [3] Unable to contain his excitement long enough even to change into his royal robes, David paints the picture of a man so overcome with joy at the presence of God that he has no other choice than to dance before Him. Kanye West’s release of Jesus is King tells a strikingly similar story. 

King David was not without his critics, though. Seeing her husband dancing outside her window, David’s wife, Michal, “despised [David] in her heart” and compared him to “one of the vulgar fellows” who “shamelessly uncovers himself.” [4] Like Kanye, David’s reaction to encountering the presence of God was pretty cringe-worthy. The king of Israel was dancing in the street in his undergarments. But, knowing the depths of lament he had felt in the absence of God, David simply could not contain himself. Anything less than reckless and all-consuming celebration would have been woefully insufficient. 

For thousands of years, the Israelites were trapped in a cycle of putting their trust in kings and being let down. The people of Israel were not meant to live under imperfect kings forever, though. They were promised a coming king by whose “stripes” the Israelites were to be “healed” [5]. The Israelites received this king when Jesus came to earth, lived a perfect life, was sentenced to death, rose from the grave, and ascended into heaven. Kanye West spent much of the last decade wrestling with his own paradoxes to the point of despair. When he finally met the one who sees past contradictions, saying “Come to me … and I will give you rest” [6], Kanye found the freedom that knowing Jesus brings. Kanye had finally met the king -- how could he not dance?

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