Kanye West: God 'wanted people to see my pain' so 'more people can relate'
Rapper Kanye West continues to make waves with his recent profession of faith in Jesus, sharing with comedian James Corden how he encountered God.
In Monday night's segment of Carpool Karapke, aptly renamed Airpool Karaoke for this interview on CBS' "The Late Late Show," Corden boarded a flight to Los Angeles, California, with West and the Sunday Service singers.
During the flight, West spoke of the joys and challenges of marriage, and explained how being married has changed his sense of time. West wed reality TV star Kim Kardashian five years ago while she was pregnant with their first child.
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"Marriage years are different than human years," he said. "Like you know how dog years are like seven years? Every marriage year is like 100 years." The rapper joked that marriage has felt as though it has lasted "500 years."
West also shared that his family did not know how to help him during his lowest moments. "People in my family were praying for me, but they couldn't call me and scream at me. I'm a grown man," he said.
"But it was God that came and put this thing on my heart and asked if I was ready to be in service to Him," he added, noting, "I have no regret and no shame."
West told Corden that it was at a hospital two years ago when he wrote in his journal something God put on his heart to do: "Start a church in Calabasas."
"God has always had a plan for me," he said, when asked if this dream has been brewing for years even before that moment at the hospital.
"I think He wanted me to suffer more, and wanted people to see my suffering and see my pain and put stigmas on me, and have me go through all the experiences — the human experiences. So now when I talk about how Jesus saved me, more people can relate to that experience."
The segment concluded with a rendition of "Selah," a song from his latest album Jesus Is King.
Meanwhile, commentators continue to react to the artist's conversion to Christ and its broader implications for society, with some hoping that, in light of other statements West has made, that a cultural shift is afoot.
Writing in National Review Monday, Andrew Walker, a senior fellow at the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, noted that the lyrics in West's latest album are "shockingly Christian," and that only time will tell as to what might come from his public profession of faith in Christ.
"Kanye West is now a cultural reactionary by the standards of our society, and could be, in time, a cultural wrecking ball that dislodges so much of the assumed, comfortable, and unchecked cultural liberalism that dominates the most elite sectors of our country and mocks anything resembling traditionalism and social conservatism. In an age of libertarian sentiment, when the currency of American society appear to be glamorization and the notion that consent is the only reasonable moral standard, West is calling for restraint and limits," Walker said.
"We need to let Kanye be a Christian Kanye without making him into a Christian celebrity," he added.
