Yesterday, Brewing Culture quoted a piece from the September issue of Paste on rapper Kanye West. The Brewing Culture post, titled “Kanye West’s Contradictions,” is a good segue into one the most challenging issues in engaging culture. What do we do with artists who apparently share our faith but not our convictions? Kanye West is a good example—one of his hit singles is the confessional and catchy “Jesus Walks,” but profanity and debauchery also pepper his catalog. Thus, at least to many in the Church, a walking contradiction is born. Kanye, as quoted by Paste, responds the apparent contradiction by saying, “I feel like that’s who real people are: Real people are conflicted. And you know when you’re doing wrong, and you know when you’re just being a human being and you fall short of the glory – that’s what we say back in church, ‘fall short of glory.’”
To be sure, everyone could use the reminder, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” before we begin deciding which celebrities sin often enough that we can know for sure they aren’t Christians. God forbid we do that. But, I don’t think we can help from wondering about the public contradictions.
Another example, which many seem to have swept under the rug, is Mel Gibson. In retrospect, it was quite a journey for Gibson to go from Mad Max to St. Mel (perhaps Deacon Mel to the evangelicals) after he brought The Passion of the Christ to screens worldwide. But isn’t it interesting that in 2000 Mel played Nick Marshall in What Women Want—a role in which he used his ability to read women’s thoughts in order to get a barista into bed? Three years later, Mel became the most venerated Christian in California, despite the potentially contradictory work on his résumé. Then, of course came his 2006 DUI arrest, during which he made some pretty outrageous and offensive statements to the police.
I don’t want to vilify either man—I like both of them—and I’m certainly not advocating boycotts of the works of Kanye West and Mel Gibson until we collectively determine they’ve gotten their acts together. I believe that we should celebrate beautiful, truthful, significant art where it may be found, but the contradictions often presented by artists are worthy of consideration. It may be that the lesson here is we should be careful about putting artists, Christian or otherwise, on pedestals. After all, they’re only human, and as humans we all fall short of glory.