Let me start with a confession: I have been trying to find an in to write about Chance the Rapper's new mixtape Coloring Book for about two weeks. Now, if we're picking the best people to write about a hit hip hop project that just dropped, then I probably come in at roughly 4,429,793,002.
Coloring Book has been drawing wide critical acclaim; many predict it will be on many "Best of 2016" lists. What's interesting is that the mixtape is steeped in gospel (both the good news and the music genre). You may have seen Chance perform "Blessings" on Jimmy Fallon. The hook of that song is "I'm gonna praise Him, praise Him 'til I'm gone." "How Great" begins with a gospel choir performing perhaps the most moving version of "How Great is Our God" I have heard.
Of course, it's not exactly an album that will be passed around many white evangelical youth groups (at least not publicly). There is a ton of profanity, some drug references, and an out of wedlock pregnancy is identified as the catalyst for the mixtape's hopeful bent. Yet I feel like that enhances Chance's testifying. He's not trying to sell something (literally since the mixtape is technically free). He seems like a normal albeit immensely talented guy who is overjoyed about God.
There is something about the album that grabs you in the best way possible. A review in Pitchfork even remarked that Coloring Book is "an uplifting mix of spiritual and grounded that even an atheist can catch the Spirit to." Atheists catching the Spirit. I think that was the review that finally convinced me to download the mixtape and it's pretty much all I have listened to since.
That's the intro. Or the entrée, as Chance raps on the opening track of his mixtape, which is why I'm writing this. I went for a run this earlier this evening and "All We Got" kicked off the playlist to which I was listening. And somewhere in the second verse, that intangible thing about this music that had been grabbing me became tangible.
I get my word from the sermon
I do not talk to the serpent
That's holistic discernment
Daddy said I'm so determined
Told me these goofies can't hurt me
I just might make some Earl tea
I was baptized like real early
I might give Satan a swirlie
Just reading the lyrics, it might look goofy. But you have to understand that on the track he is shouting these raps thick with joy. His voice is like a trumpet. There is an electricity to his joy that is infectious. It draws you in. It doesn't seem like Chance is just paying lip service to God. He sounds like someone who has been born again and it is the most awesome thing ever.
I realized on my run that I have heard that kind of shout of joy before. I have heard it come out of my own mouth.
I am not a great singer. I played bass guitar in a worship band at camp for many years, which was cool because A) I was in a band and B) I did not have a microphone so I could sing my lungs out if the mod struck me and not really worry about messing things up. And there were times when that is just what I did.
One time we were not playing as a full band. I was extending an invitation at the end of a worship service and my brother-in-law Robin was leading music. I don't remember what the drama was that night. I don't remember what I said. I don't even remember what summer it was. All I remember is that Robin played "How He Loves" by John Mark McMillan. The second time he hit the second verse, he let it rip. I put the microphone behind my back, shut my eyes, and shout-sang the words.
We are His portion and He is our prize
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes
If grace is an ocean, we're all sinking
So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss
And my heart pounds violently inside of my chest
I don't have time to maintain these regrets when I think about
The way He loves us
Again, reading the lyrics may not do much and I know many people raise an eyebrow to the emotion that is in worship music. I am that person often. But I can tell you that in that moment, every atom of my being was trying to escape to declare how much God loves each of us. I felt born again and it was the most awesome thing ever.
I want to sing and tell about God the way that Chance raps about God. With infectious joy. The kind of joy that would make an atheist think they have caught a whiff of the Spirit. Because in the best moments of my faith that is how God has felt: this all-consuming awesomeness that changes the world from drab black and white to technicolor. I don't think you can stay at that level of joy, but it carries you a long way when it happens.
And it seems like it has been a long time for me. But another cool thing happened on that run. The drizzle from the sky when I started picked up into a steady rain. Yet the sun still shone brightly through the clouds. It was beautiful and, as the water continued to fall on me, I was reminded of baptism.
I remembered my family sitting in the pews. The weird feeling of my socks as they were soaked in the pool. I remember going under. I was seven. "I was baptized like real early." I was born again. That feeling of being born again ebbed and flowed with time. There are dry seasons at times when we follow God. But I thought about other moments that, while technically not baptisms, felt like baptisms all the same. They were moments in which God's mercy felt acutely real to me and the joy was overwhelming. "If grace is an ocean, we're all sinking." Throughout my journey, God was always bringing me back at some point in time or another. There were baptisms and rebirths that would shape me, sustain me as my faith matured and transformed.
I come from a tradition that tosses out the saying "Once saved, always saved." I have gone back and forth over the ramifications and accuracy of that. Theologically, I know what they're getting at. I think my problem with that saying is that it locks salvation to a fixed point in time. It's all in the past and, frankly, there are many times that I need salvation in the present, thank you very much. Perhaps we should say, "Once saved, always being saved." It better accounts for one's spiritual journey: the ways in which we need to be rescued from ourselves and the world around us, the ways in which God is continually creating and renewing us, baptizing us again and again.
It has been some time since I let out that overjoyed yawp of the born again. Yet as I felt the rain come down, I remembered my baptism. Rather, I remembered my baptisms and the ways in which God has made me new. As the rain came down on me, I hoped that another time of rebirth may come sometime soon. And then I'll let out the shout of the born again.
