On the Lived Theology Reading List this week is PLT Contributor David Dark‘s recent piece on Pitchfork, “What Must I Do to Be Born Again?: The Open Hands of Kendrick Lamar.” In this piece, Dark offers up the spiritual teachings from Lamar‘s lyrics in his new album To Pimp a Butterfly, describing it as “an experiment in self-examination.”

From the article:

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” This sacred insight, attributed to Jesus of Nazareth in the Gospel of Thomas, pulsates within every track on offer in Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. A missive of militant transparency, it chronicles afresh Lamar’s tried and true conviction that giving lyrical voice to his deepest fears, anxieties, and resentments is the surest path to shaking free of them. “I could never right my wrongs ‘less I write it down for real,” he once explained in “Poetic Justice” on good kid, m.A.A.d city. But this time around, he puts a diviner point on it: “My rights, my wrongs, I write ‘til I’m right with God.”

To read the full article, click here.

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