Love Like Kanye Loves Kanye

I recently read an article about why we need to give Kanye West more grace, and I haven't stopped thinking about it.

If you’ve watched the news at all, you’ve seen the Kanye headlines. He’s running for president, openly struggling with bipolar disorder, saying some questionable-at-best things about Harriet Tubman, asking for help, receiving it, not receiving it, and being ridiculed every step of the way.

It’s simultaneously sad and entertaining. Which, as the author of the essay describes, may be exactly the point:

When West appeared on TMZ to make his “slavery is a choice” comment, the circus machine revved itself back up. Come, they invited audiences, he’s doing it again.

The author writes about Kanye's public struggle with mental health and the public's subsequent response. He then puts people into two “rigid moral certitudes:” those who shamelessly ridicule and those who blindly defend. Making fun of Kanye is cruel and a form of enablement, the author argues, but ignoring his harmful comments completely is equally ignorant.

We need a different response, or as the author says:

We urgently need a new public language that pulls all of these threads together—a language that explains but doesn’t excuse, a language that contextualizes but doesn’t absolve.

As I read that, I thought, wow, we’re getting really close to the gospel. But then we got closer.

Mercy needs acknowledgment of wrong and acknowledgment of circumstance. It is less satisfying than the confident Kanye takes that get thrown about every day. It requires a nuance the content factories seem ill-equipped for.

There’s something to this idea of acknowledging wrong and acknowledging circumstance. It might be helpful to think of it in terms of guilt and shame.

Kanye’s critics see nothing but his guilt and use it to add to his shame while his blindly loyal supporters ignore his guilt in order to save him from shame. But both of these are their own form of ignorance.

Instead, we all need to understand that recognizing someone’s flaws isn’t a sin—it’s an acknowledgment of similarity. In Kanye’s failures, I see myself. I see my desire to be noticed, to be right, to be loved. In recognizing Kanye’s “guilt”—his missteps in an attempt to gain the recognition and acceptance we all crave—we can actually free him of shame.

We don’t have to ignore his wrongs. Instead, we can look at his failures, regardless of their relatability, and understand that he’s just like us. We’re all just like us. And that’s okay. We don’t have to be ashamed of the guilt we all share.

In fact, recognizing our shared guilt is the only way to absolve us from shame. Because we are all guilty, each in our own unique way, why should we feel shame about that? Shame is full of doubt and wonder and insecurity because it feeds off isolation. It constantly whispers in our ears, “You’re alone in this.”

It feeds off of a spotlight that either the world or ourselves shine on our worst acts as if that’s all we are. Not only are we not alone in this feeling, but we don’t have to be defined by our worst acts. That’s where Jesus came in. He looked our guilt square in the eye and said, “That doesn’t define you. I can absolve you of that.” And He did.

Shame is the natural response to guilt for those who don’t know that they’re forgiven and loved. We’re all guilty. But we’re also all forgiven and all loved. Shame doesn’t exist inside love. It’s why husbands and wives have weird voices that they only use in front of one another. How can you be embarrassed when the love you receive is unconditional?

That’s what God offers all of us in our relationship with him. Grace can only come with an acknowledgment of guilt. And grace alone can remove the remnants of shame. But what is grace again?

Grace isn't a free pass to do whatever you want—to remain in guilt—nor is it a blind eye to repeated error.

It's an acknowledgment of failure—of someone's inability to do good—and a movement of love toward that person.

It's Jesus.