“I am completely confused about the fascination to this person, and how any of what he had to say, was based on any godly principles. Please help me to understand why you are upholding any of his rhetoric?”
Fascination: the state of being intensely interested (as by awe or terror); captivation; the capacity to attract intense interest.
I appreciate that this woman at the very least had the courage to ask the question. I have no doubt that many wonder the same! How did I become captivated with Kevin Samuels’ content? Well, after Kevin’s passing, someone turned me on to his videos. I was hooked from video one! I approached his videos in good faith, listening thoroughly from beginning to the end! The words resonated with me personally. I saw my wins and I saw my losses and wasn’t such a fragile snowflake nor a weak Christian that I was not able to sift through the language, the tone, the delivery, or whatever bones some listeners often choked on! I chewed the meat and threw out the bones; and found that the meat was marinated with nothing but the truth! Kevin’s messages were intriguing and thought-provoking!
Though Kevin offered his opinions, had his personal likes and dislikes and was very clear that he spoke in generalities; it was evident to me that Kevin had a heart for the Black community and the Black family! His passion was intensely palpable! I believe that Kevin’s content was so important and impactful, that he was actually doing God’s work; yes, God’s work!
After listening to hours upon hours of his content, I heard truth – the harsh truth, but truth nevertheless! “And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” John 8:32. I am a Christian, and one thing that I know is that we are often not honest with one another. We don’t outright tell our fellow brothers and sisters the truth; and so consequently, the church mirrors the world with the divorce rate for Christians rivaling that of non-Christians at approximately 50%! With the immersion of prosperity gospel and the grace message, we have fostered delusion and celebrated sin. As Kevin stated, “We should bring shame back to the church”! Should we? We are so bound by political correctness and not hurting one another’s feelings that we just allow stuff to happen and turn a blind eye!
As a Christian woman, I decided to take my head out of the sand! Many Christians, especially the older women, have their heads buried in the sand and do not have a clue what’s going on in the dating world – with our Christian sons and daughters! And what’s sad is that the Titus 2:4-5 command to older women is a scripture ignored in many churches. As a matter of fact, more and more Christian feminists are running the churches, and many men are opting out! These women are teaching biblical equality, squashing gender roles, and promoting the idea that submission is a bad word! Kevin said this: “Christianity and feminism are two diametrically opposed doctrines!”
“These older women must train the younger women to love their husbands and their children, to live wisely and be pure, to work in their homes, to do good, and to be submissive to their husbands. Then they will not bring shame on the word of God.” Titus 2:4-5
How in the world can we train the younger women, when we have not been taught ourselves! My mother did not teach me how to be anybody’s wife! The only thing I recall being taught regarding a man was from my grandmother, who said in essence, make sure you hide money from your husband in case he gets to actin’ funny with the money!” In other words, go into your marriage with a fear, lack and scarcity mindset! My mother was so preoccupied with her own failed relationships and trying to manage her own emotional stability, that we children just lived in survival mode! When I got older and got married, I was just improvising through it all, with no real knowledge or skills to be a wife! Needless to say, that marriage eventually failed!
I would venture to say that there are VERY few “older women” in the church who would genuinely qualify to teach the younger women! If I were in charge of anything, I would make Kevin Samuels’ videos the reference tools and curriculum for teaching women – self-awareness, humility, and honesty just to begin with! Instead, we are creating a church full of D.U.D.E.S. – Delusional, Ungrateful, in Denial, Entitled and Selfish! In addition to his videos, I would recommend my reference guide: “‘Buy a dog and die alone’ and more than 500 other quips, questions, quotes, and the vocabulary frequently used by the Godfather, Kevin Samuels!”, available on Amazon!
I put this together after listening to Kevin become frustrated that many of his guests were not understanding what he was talking about; and as an educated person with a master’s degree, I was struggling as well! The guide serves to not only educate as far as learning new words, but also to educate as far as learning how our young people operate today! Shoot, I was married for most of my adult life, so I had no idea what was going on out here in these dating streets! I just learned that “Net-flix and chill” means more than just relaxing and watching a movie!
Our young people today are Net-flix and chilling and creating a crisis in our churches that has gotten out of control – that of young ladies choosing to carry before they marry! Women are not becoming pregnant accidently! According to varying sources, there are close to 20 or more types of birth control! Women often blame men, but we women control access to sex and who gets born – you know, like when we stand strong when it comes to abortion rights! “Our body our choice!” Right? We cannot continue to dismiss and shift accountability away from our young women, when it’s convenient.
Dear Christian parents, your sweet young daughters are choosing to get pregnant! This has been normalized in our society and in our own families! This is the kind of information that you learn when you take your head out of the sand. The number of women who believe that having a baby is easier than having a husband and a family is astronomical! These young ladies have greater fantasies of having a baby to love than having a loving marriage! That’s too much work, they say; never mind the disadvantages that this child is born into…a single parent household! The statistics are alarming – 80% of Black babies are born into single parent households! Women are choosing to dish the man for “something” to love, or for someone who will love them; after all, they grew up in fatherless homes and therefore did not receive the love that only a father can give to a girl child.
I understand not growing up with a father in the home, being witness to and the collateral damage of a dysfunctional marital relationship and not having that fatherly love expressed towards me. These women don’t see the work involved in raising these children in these dysfunctional situations and the trauma these children suffer which will result in a litany of issues down the road!
So, how do we respond to this baby momma crisis in the church? Grace upon grace of course; but is this grace for the young lady, or is it for the embarrassed parents? They thought they had their babies “under control” but now they are being exposed in the eyes of judgmental Christians as having done something wrong! Wow! Are parents who show off their expectant daughters, soliciting grace, and throwing elaborate baby showers actually celebrating as the “expectant grandparents” in order to assuage their own guilt consciousness? Grandparents-to-be showers! Hmmm.
We must stop sending the message to our young girls coming up that it is ok to carry before you marry when it is not! In the words of Samuels, “Stop celebrating baby mommas!” and I agree! Stop normalizing this behavior! If you choose to do something for your daughter and her baby daddy, do that…privately; but don’t parade them before the church and the world as if this is ok, because this is not! This is not personal! It’s not about hurting someone’s feelings. This is more critical! It’s about the creation of yet another fractured family and THIS is not celebration worthy!
Celebration: the action of marking one’s pleasure at an important event or occasion by engaging in enjoyable, typically social, activity.
As Kevin once put it: “Y’all are so coochie-focused, that you’re no earthly good!” The church is obsessed with sex! We as the church have to ask ourselves, “How is this working for us?” The church is having just as much pre-marital sex as the world! Young ladies are getting pregnant, over, and over and over again with multiple baby daddies! I believe that the answer is TEACHING our young people the practical side – the consequences of having children out of wedlock, without the benefit of an intact nuclear family.
As I stated, these women are making the conscious decision to accept the seed without the man. This poses new issues when, she wakes up and now wants to be married to a productive, competitive, successful man. She looks for him to rescue her, take care of that – or those – other man’s seeds and make her life posh! In addition to that, she expects him to take third, fourth or fifth place behind her children…and discipline them? That’s a whole another blog! Make that make sense, though!
This is the delusion that we foster, especially when we don’t address the issues, but rather wrap them nicely in grace and mercy bows! We have got to think about these children and the disadvantages they face – no father in the home, a mother who is most likely disparaging the father, boys being raised by broken mothers, girls (and boys) growing up unprotected and being exposed to sexual exploitation and abuse; children who don’t have the chance to just be children, staying up late at night to take care of a baby sister or brother while mother is out doing whatever! These children then must get up to go to school the next day!
As an educator I have seen the product of children who are being raised with no structure or discipline! I cannot tell you the number of times a boy child has verbally or attempted to physically abuse me! This is what we need to think about, because many of us were once those children! This is what we need to be teaching instead of “you going to hell for having sex!” Christian people, these type messages ring in the ears of our young people like the unintelligible voice of that Charlie Brown teacher! https://youtu.be/ss2hULhXf04?si=IJssFUtpambrEiGT These young people have certainly been lulled to sleep by our ineffective, or most often, missing messages regarding human sexuality!
And so…my “fascination” was with how one man on a YouTube channel, in such a short period of time, unloaded and addressed a boatload of issues! Kevin was a self-professing Christian who taught godly principles, as unorthodox as they may have been! They were truth and effective, his content impacting over one million subscribers and viewers…and still is! What are you doing to effect change? Many see this man’s language, tone, and delivery as offensive and consequently miss out on important nuggets and opportunities to learn! Many of us women are not getting the outcomes in our own lives that we say we want and so desperately desire, and we don’t know how to get them! Weekly, we hear messages of hope, but the good is not showing up! Make that make sense!
hope: a confident expectation of good.
Many would say that Kevin Samuels took away women’s hope. It wasn’t that he took away women’s hope. What he sought to take away was hope rooted in fantasy! He sought to get us to think, to examine facts, data, and statistics and to use reason and logic! He sought to get us to stop making life decisions based on feelings and emotions. He sought to get us to stop thinking more highly of ourselves and to walk in self-awareness and humility. What he sought to do was teach us how to become the best version of ourselves so that we could get the outcomes in life that we say we want! Kevin was a champion for the Black family with the core belief that “together we’re better”!