A middle-class white kid back in the '90s, I bounced along to Snoop Dogg's music just like everyone else. Embarrassed now to admit, yet I'll own it; as a pathetically pale and pimply 14-year-old, there was something about Snoop Dogg's music that moved me.

Strange to think now, clearly there was some sort of mesmerizing power to it, in the vile, violent and misogynistic lyrics that enchanted my unformed adolescence, fueled my awkward hormones and puerile desire for rebellion without risk.

As an otherwise buttoned-down, well-behaved kid in my little town, singing along to Snoop Dogg made me feel bigger than I was, offering a fantasy of belonging to a larger, cooler world where, of course, what Snoop Dogg rapped about was normal and celebrated, all of it so rhythmically sexual, salacious and scintillating. Such was the myth I bought behind my mom's back, because she would've killed me otherwise. And that, of course, made Snoop Dogg millions, a fortune made mostly on sordid pubescent dreams.

It's not a genre that's aged well with me. Trying to listen to it these days is impossible, so disgusting and dehumanizing it all sounds now. As a father of four, now I feel what my parents must've felt. The magic of it gone, in this #MeToo world, riddled with gun violence, it all seems too vulgar, too dangerous. For me, looking back, only Biggie Smalls measures as a pure genius; only his brilliance still seems to transcend the vulgarity of his lyrics. Otherwise, it all seems but the soundtrack of an immature age, personally and socially, an era of subpar art better forgotten than rebooted.

The cover art from Snoop Dogg's Gospel album, "Bible of Love." (AP)

Now, however, Snoop Dogg has released a Gospel album, Bible of Love, an opus far different from what we're used to hearing. Intrigued by this old teenage tempter of mine, I gave it a listen, wondering what it'd be like. For the guy who made his career singing about gin and juice, I wondered how he'd now sing about Jesus. Perhaps just more packaged celebrity "faith," I was worried it'd be but another hymnbook of bastardized Christianity, another shallow exploitation of the faith.

But I listened, and it isn't. It's excellent and beautiful.

And that's what's got me smiling, bouncing along yet again to Snoop Dogg after all these years, both of us obviously older, wiser and more grateful. No longer a tempter, now I've rediscovered him as my brother in a faith it turns out we've always shared. Now he's got me thinking better things, his art drawing me higher instead of lower. Snoop Dogg now sanctified, as he says himself, "I guess you could say, I'm a brand new man." Better music from a better man, in him I recognize redemption and the same sort of grace which has graced me.

And that's what signals hope, for all of us.

Because it's a sign we can grow up, change and finally embrace the good, and more importantly, that it's possible to move beyond the past, possible even to help each other move forward. It's a reminder that we shouldn't allow ourselves to be trapped by our past and that we shouldn't keep others trapped in theirs. It's a reminder we should rejoice in conversion and redemption and change, because there is something called grace. Because, again, to quote Snoop Dogg, "Second chances come with every sunrise."

And it's grace socially relevant, more than merely religious.

Because in a society as divided as ours, the temptation to weaponize a person's squalid past so as to destroy a person's better present is as alluring as ever. On this point, we've not evolved, rather, the opposite. And that's because in this social media world, engaging arguments is harder than simply discrediting a person, tearing people down easier than reasoning with them. Which has made us forget our capacity for redemption, our capacity for change for the better, and the good of mercy and the utility of second chances. It's made us forget grace.

And that's precisely what America must learn again, grace. And it's why I think Snoop Dogg has something worthwhile to say, and to more than just the faithful, but all of us. And it's also why I'm happy to call him my brother in the Lord and to sing along with him again, his redemption song.

I just hope more people sing with us. Because it's the only song that doesn't end.

Joshua J. Whitfield is a pastoral administrator for St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas. Email: jwhitfield@stritaparish.net

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