Some days I just feel like a square block in a round world. I’ve heard that statement almost all of my life; never paid much attention to it until about the last 2 years of my life. At times I feel as though I’m going out of my mind. Nothing in particular brought this on; I’m not feeling suicidal; this is something I’ve been processing for quite some time; no, I’m not “loosing faith”; just processing life in the post soul context.

Over the last 8 years, I’ve gone through a type of metamorphosis of sorts and have really begun to deal with some issues in my life that was hindering me. I’ve been able to really see some things from a different perspective and have completely seen God in a different light, understanding, place, & context. Good right? It’s just that the more I grow, the more I feel like that block in a round mall. Over the years I’ve been able to really grow interpersonally, but also find myself growing away from people I thought I’d be friends with “the rest of my life.”

Let me take this a step further. As a Hip Hopper, I tend to see things as they are and call out the “fake” and deal with the “real” but as I’ve dove further into Christianity and attempted to apply some of these core principles from Hip Hop, it seems the more I appear to be “hostile,” hard to work with, always “angry,” just inconsolable, never happy, or my personal favorite “not following God.” That last statement is always a winner in my book! And it always seems to come from someone who has just “gotten a word from the Lord.” In my life, I’ve never been able to kiss ass too well. It got me into a lot of trouble growing up with a principle who was a former KKK grand dragon and insisted I call him “sir,” it caused me to move to 2nd string on the football team because I wouldn’t tell coach he was “doing a good job” when he had us run in 120° heat, it caused me to be a lousy fund raiser when I wouldn’t accept donor money from people who told me “as long as you keep them out of my neighborhood I’ll give you $50 grand,” and it has caused me a few friendships when I refused to own their crap in the relationship; so I tend to feel like I’m losing my mind at times.

Of course I know I’m not, but sometimes culture, tradition, symbolism, and family history trump real and factual theology; I find myself at odds with tradition and engrained, dogmatic, unmovable, and stubborn connections to “church & God.” I find myself at odds with people who refuse to budge on any issue because “its always been that way.” I find myself at odds with the youth pastor who preached to his members that God had told him he needed a Bentley, and that they needed to “follow the will of God.” I also find myself at odds with the current crisis in urban leadership where people just seem to fail upwards into positions of power, seniority, and prestige; while the people who are actually “doing the work” are often looked at as a Gay Taliban member on vacation in North Hollywood.

So often, I find myself re-reading one of my favorite scriptures in the Gospels, John 6, where Jesuz just starts all kinds of crap and never really looks back. Jesuz, in the true sense and spirit of Hip Hop, keeps it real and tells the people tha real deala! Moreover, Jesuz pisses off the same people, just the day before, He was feeding, and who were all “praising God” for the miracle. Wild stuff. But Jesuz kept it moving and continued on His square journey.

What I don’t want to do here is create an “I’m better than” mantra. Nor do I want to create a Dan Hodge martyr fan list. What I do want, is to begin the most relevant conversation on theology in the post soul context; I want to dive into really understanding what the Bible says under the 2000 years of a lot of mis-guided interpretation coupled with cultural traditions and norms; I want to engage society with truth and light, but do so in a way that doesn’t fit any model we currently have—this is what made Tupac so powerful in his Gospel message; I want to “get real” and talk about the fact that we have some serious issues to contend with if we are going to continue calling ourselves “Christian.”

The post soul context gives us a great opportunity to deal with these issues. Moreover, Hip Hop community allows us to reconcile while engaging in intense, passionate, sometimes heated conversation—just like Jesuz did.

Who knows, maybe there are some other squares out there who see some of the same things…