By now you’ve seen the posts online from former Gospel Rapper Jahaziel. (If not, read here). The reaction from the church community has been a mixed bag of confusion, sadness, concern, anger, condemnation and the list goes on. I want to focus on a particular aspect, condemnation!
It seems many rushed into taking God’s place in condemning. Some might say the condemnation is due because of how he has attacked Christianity. Jahaziel does not need me to defend his actions but I think if Christianity is about love then we should be able to let people freely join or question our faith and freely leave or disagree with the faith rather than adopting a mafia type Christianity where the only way to leave is in a body bag of condemnation.
The bible calls us to give an answer for our faith with gentleness and respect [1 Peter 3:15] rather than the bully tactics that we see from online personalities like Lavoisier.
I don’t agree with all Jahaziel’s views but I think that many of his questions are valid and we need the UK Christian community to address the questions being posed. We need to have a public discussion rather than a public hanging. Shouldn’t we be so confident in our Christianity that we can gracefully take any objections toward our faith and give an answer or are we holding onto cliche’s that mean we feel a bit insecure when the basis for our faith is challenged.
At the end of the day it seems to me that the man is looking for the truth. We can be part of that conversation or we can kick him out of our community. To Jahaziel I say thanks for all you’ve done for our community. I’m sorry that we’re no longer on the same page faith wise but let’s stay in touch and keep the conversation going. You may no longer be a Christian but we’re still down for our brother. DFMB all the way!
written by UK rapper Baliva
you can follow Baliva on Twitter
