Unashamed

by Lecrae

Joe had been going to seminary, and he started to introduce me to great Christian thinkers like C. S. Lewis who, in some way, also joined the community that was supporting me.

I now knew I was a Christian because I’m weak and admitted I need a Savior. There was no other power that could save me outside of the power of God.

Instead of just trying to love non-Christians well and treat them like Jesus would, I tried to argue them into a corner where they had to convert in order to escape. Rather than focusing on winning people, I was trying to win arguments.

As you can imagine, people didn’t always respond so well to my abrasive arguments. But that didn’t matter; I wore rejection like a badge of honor.

I saw my connection with God as a contractual relationship, rather than a covenantal relationship. All contracts have terms, but covenants don’t. They last forever.

The song, “Crossover,” caught fire at camp and spread well beyond. As it became successful, Ben caught a vision for something bigger. He realized that there was an opportunity for more good hip-hop from Christians in the marketplace and wanted to start a music label. Ben offered to make me one of its first artists if I was interested.

Just like that, Reach Records was born.

Ben’s passion to change lives through music drove him to work tirelessly to shape the vision and direction of our new record label.

They didn’t fit in at most churches, but they understood our music. Now they felt like they could love rap and love Jesus without compromising anything.

Going on mission trips is a noble thing, of course. But my motivation was off. I was proud of myself, and I wanted others to be proud of me too. The subtle message in the music was “You need to be like me.”

In addition to self-righteousness, my music was influenced by my own insecurities and need for acceptance. I wanted for people to tell me I was good enough and to feel like I was a part of a community.

Being theologically educated is a great thing. And using music to explicitly express theology is needed. But I mistakenly believed it was the only way to make music.

On rare occasion, however, I would let go and let the “lamenter” in me come out. When I did—when I let Lecrae just be Lecrae—it would spark magic.

The lyrics are raw as I rap about the struggles of this man. He feels the pull of materialism and greed. He’s not always a loving husband to his wife. He wrestles with worry and anxiety about the future. His spiritual life isn’t what it should be, and he has a hard time trusting God. And then comes the song’s surprise ending:

As the music gained momentum, I started to think God was preparing to change me. But before God could change me, He needed to mature me. And before God could mature me, He needed to move me.

I prayed for God to bring a woman like Calvin described into my life. I got real with God and told Him exactly what I was feeling and asked Him to lead the kind of woman

I needed to me. I asked God for each attribute, starting with a love for Christ. But in the midst of asking, I had a revolutionary thought: what if the girl I was praying for was already here? While I desperately wanted God to do something for me, maybe

needed to trust in what God was already d...

Darragh had seen me at my high points and low points, on my best days and worst. I had cycled between faith and doubt, clarity and confusion, hope in God and complete despair. She chose to stay my friend through it all. One of Darragh’s greatest strengths is faithfulness, which explains why she had remained during my roller coaster ride. My craziness couldn’t destroy her faithfulness.

But when God is taking you somewhere, He usually opens the door. You only have to be willing to walk when He does. The door opened for us when Ben’s friend in Memphis helped us get a grant from a private donor to pay for our move into the community. Before I knew it, I, Darragh, and all of our belongings were on our way. Not long after we settled into our tiny cul-de-sac house on Mimosa Avenue in the Binghampton neighborhood, Darragh and I realized just how much we would need God’s help.

I was determined to be for these kids what I needed but never had: a strong male figure who they could look up to, confide in, and lean on. But my ultimate goal wasn’t to be their friend. I wanted to help shape their character and raise them to be leaders.

The level of crime in our neighborhood was more intense than anything Darragh or I had faced before. We slept on the floor at night because gunfire was ringing outside and we didn’t want to get hit by a stray bullet while sleeping in bed.

“I moved to Memphis to serve you, God,” I prayed. “We’ve made more sacrifices than I can count for you. So why is life so hard?” Eventually, I realized that I would lose my wife’s heart if I didn’t change. We got help from godly friends and a good counselor who helped us repair our marriage. But it was a long process and exhausting work, especially with everything else happening around us.

My deficiency was immediately apparent to one of my teachers at the Bible institute. “You don’t have a biblical worldview,” he told me. I was shocked and speechless.

Total Truth challenged the notion that following Jesus is a purely private spiritual matter. It attacked the false division between the “sacred” and the “secular,” as well as the “private” and the “public.” Christian principles are meant to saturate our lives, she says, and flow out into the world around us.

“Having a Christian worldview means being utterly convinced that biblical principles are not only true but also work better in the grit and grime of the real world,” Pearcey wrote.13

Pearcey taught me that being a Christian is not just about being saved from something but also being saved to something. Following Jesus doesn’t just save us from a less fulfilling life or eternal separation from God. It also saves us to a life that can radically transform the world around us through the power of God.

In Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, Crouch says that most Christians relate to culture in four ways. Most of the time, we just consume culture without thinking much about what we’re taking in. We can also critique or outright condemn culture when it operates according to values that don’t line up with our own. Or when we find culture alluring, but are uncomfortable with really engaging with it, we can copy culture. This is the approach that produces Christian films and Christian schools and Christian T-shirts and any other “Christian” version of something—yes, that includes Christian music. None of these approaches are sufficient, Crouch says. The only way to truly transform culture is to create culture.14 Pearcey’s book led me to Crouch’s book, and now Crouch’s book led me to the “Good Book.” And this was when everything changed for me.

Sitting on that tour bus, I had my own Caesarea Philippi moment. I could no longer assume that Christianity only affected the way I saw salvation or sanctification; I needed to accept that it was the total truth about the world. I could no longer condemn, critique, copy, or mindlessly consume culture; I needed to begin creating culture as a child of the Great Creator. And I could no longer sit comfortably inside my Christian subculture and thank God that He was keeping hell away. It was time to leave the religious ghetto and kick down hell’s front door.