KB – Truly Free

That’s a major, multi-stream theme in my life. I heard this quote the other day that said, “We are not products of our environments, but our environments are products of us.” That’s a key aim for this album.

CCM: In the title of your album, Today We Rebel, who are “we,” and who/what are they rebelling against?
KB: “We” is Jesus’s people, God’s people—period. That is my country. I’m American. I’m black in my heritage, and proud of both of those. But I’m not more proud of that than I am of being a member of the Kingdom of God.

What are rebelling against is anything that would want to take our freedom. Again, that’s another multi-layered thing. That can be Jesus saying, “On this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it.” That means there is a move for the gates of hell, the kingdom of darkness, to overcome what we have. Our reaction to that is rebellion.

photo: Mary Caroline Russel

We will not become the products of anybody’s political agenda. We will not become the product of our own love for security. That’s another big thing that I highlight as we go through this project… That the problem’s not just out there. The oppression is not just out there. The spirit of colonization exists in all of us. It’s sin. It’s this piece of us that wants to dominate and take things that don’t belong to us and make it our own, and, primarily and most ultimately, our lives do not belong to us. They belong to God. We even have to rebel against that selfishness in us that wants to take our lives for our own purposes.

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