The hip hop artist referenced his deconstruction journey, which he has shared about elsewhere. During that period of time, he was not sure that God was real. But even then, he was concerned about not hurting the faith of others, to the extent that one time he was at a party where people were passing a joint around, and he smoked it out of sight.
Smoking weed was “younger brother” behavior, but Lecrae also has a warning to the “older brothers” who would judge him as he used to judge fellow believers.
“I was slandered to the point where I stopped believing that this faith was real,” he said. “It started small. It started with me just wanting, you know, to care for the families of people like Trayvon Martin or Mike Brown.” There was one Christian leader in particular, whom Lecrae highly respected, who, instead of reaching out to Lecrae privately with the leader’s concerns, publicly said Lecrae was guilty of “ethnic gnosticism.”
“Now, what did that do to a young man in his faith?” Lecrae asked. “Crushed me, made me start to wither, made me start to doubt, made me start to wonder if this thing was even real. Because the people that I look to for insight and wisdom are publicly destroying me.”
“God bless Tim Keller,” said Lecrae. “He’s probably the one person who pulled me in, invited me in, had conversations with me, and, you know, really wrestled with me through that process, instead of just joining the slander team.”
“So don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t be the older brother.”
