By Jonathan Meisner
A few weeks ago, I got to hang out with a guy whose music has motivated me in the gym, been a soundtrack to family breakfasts, and caused a few rap sessions in my car. Andy Mineo is beyond talented as a rap artist, but I have always admired how he uses his talent and platform to point people to trust God. Some of his recent music has really connected with me and thousands of fans as he has talked about something that some may deem taboo—how to trust God when you have doubts in your faith. We were scheduled to be together to capture video for his YouVersion Bible Plan: Living With Doubt. I was looking forward to my interview with him and learning more about what he’s learned as he’s walked through this journey. Here’s our conversation:
Jonathan:
Andy, thank you so much for the time today, I’ve been looking forward to this since we first connected a few months ago.
Andy:
Me too. It’s going to be a good time.
Jonathan:
When did your love for music begin?
Andy:
So growing up, there was a group of friends, I was about 10 years old, and we’d ride bikes together. There’s some older guys we’d hang out with, and they’d always have a boom box on the porch, and they’d be playing whatever was big at the time. Tupac, DMX, Biggie, Snoop. And so, naturally I was just gravitating toward the big brothers who were playing cool music.
Me and my best friend, we started to write parodies of other people’s songs. We’d take the lyrics, and we would replace them with our own just to be funny. And that kind of sent us into a path of writing our own lyrics. I remember we would go to the store, and we would buy a CD single because we were too broke to buy the album. They would have the dirty version, the clean version, and the instrumental. We’d just take those instrumentals and write our own raps to them. Then, at my friend’s house, he ended up cracking a computer program and we figured out how to record ourselves. We started doing that in the house on little computer microphones.
One day my friend finally figured out how to make the voice and the beat overlay on top of each other. So he calls me, and he’s like, “Yo, I figured out how to make it sound like we’re rapping on a beat!” And you know, at this point, this is like cutting edge. Like you had to go to studios, and do a track, and tape, and all that. And when I heard myself on the track with the music, like over the phone, I was like, wow … this is the coolest thing I’ve ever heard. I can’t believe it’s me rapping, like I want to do this. And so since then I just had a passion, an infatuation of writing raps and recording myself.
Jonathan:
You know, I remember doing those kinds of things with a friend growing up as well. We didn’t rap, we just played the part of radio DJs and created our own radio show. Kind of like a hyped up mixtape. Neither of us had any gifting to even attempt to sing or rap to a track!
So, as an artist who’s open about your relationship with Christ, talk to me a bit about how your personal faith influences your music today.
Andy:
Yeah, I think hip-hop in particular is very high on authenticity and telling your story. I think it values those things. If you listen to rappers, you just find whatever they’re passionate about, or whatever way they live their life, or whatever they do. They’re very bold and proud of that, and they put it in their music. So, the same thing happened to me as I became a Christian, and my relationship with God started to change my life. Who I was as a person, the things I cared about, the stuff that I valued, the stuff I thought was cool started creeping its way into the music that I was making as well. So, it’s like an organic merging of my passion creatively and my passion as a person.
Jonathan:
How old were you when that happened?
Andy:
I was probably 13 or 14 years old. So I’m still learning, still creating raps, and just beginning my faith journey. Those things are starting to intersect. And I think it was a little less taboo at that time, because there were some other guys who were leading the way in doing that. I historically thought that hip-hop and faith were like completely disconnected, but over time you just realize that’s not necessarily the case. My faith informs the way I create music top to bottom. My brother says this a lot, he says, “You can lie everywhere else in life, but music is one place where honesty is necessary. You can lie to your mom, you can lie to the cops, you can lie to whoever, but you can’t lie in your music.”
So, in my music, I find it to be a place where I can vent. I can be completely honest, I can let go of all the things I’m thinking about and worrying about. It’s like a safe space for me. And I found that my faith, and the things I struggle with, the things I wrestle with, find their way into my music.
Jonathan:
Recently, in some of your music, you’ve opened up about personally struggling with your faith— almost questioning if certain elements of Christianity are even real. Tell me a bit about that journey you’ve been on.
Andy:
I think doubt started to enter my life around 2014 or 2015. In some ways I felt like, man things feel off. And I couldn’t really put a finger on it. 2016 came around, and I felt like I was seeing a lot of corruption. I felt like I was seeing so much stuff, and I felt like I was seeing very little response from the church. It seemed like the people who weren’t open and explicit about their faith were caring a lot more about justice than the people who had all the reason in the world to care about justice. And that really started to mess me up. It made me think, well, what if the people that I look up to, these heroes in my faith, if they’re not speaking up, if they’re not saying anything, if they’re not active, then what if the faith that they claim to have, there’s something off about it. And what if I have been the one who’s been receiving information about that faith? What if I’ve been downloading a weird, faulty, Americanized version of what Christianity is supposed to be? It made me start questioning if the things that I had learned were wrong. I questioned if the source that I got my information from about who Jesus was, and about Christianity, if it was all off.
That began this weird unraveling for me. I wondered if I needed to let go of the things I was taught and start over from scratch. It was a very scary thing. Because you’re often afraid that by letting go of what you understand and what you believe that you don’t know if you’ll end up believing anything when it’s done. And that was the scariest piece for me.
Jonathan:
Where did that doubt take you to? How did you approach your search for truth?
Andy:
@AndyMineo
Honestly, I started to seek out God again, and in a new way. I had to start with Scripture. I was coming back to Bible verses, and passages, and chapters that I had read a million times, but I was coming to them now with empty hands, and trying to understand them for the first time. And as I began, I basically tried to just wipe everything out that I know about God, and start from zero. I felt like I started to relearn things, except this time it wasn’t being told to me from somebody else. I felt like I was learning it for myself. And through that process is where I started to regain my passion and regain my interest. And I’ll be honest with you, I’m still in that process of reworking what I believe, what I understand about God, and what I understand about the Bible.
Jonathan:
As someone who has seasons of doubt myself, I totally resonate with that. It’s scary to walk that path and ask yourself the tough questions, and it is a process. You feel guilty for doing so, but in some ways it’s necessary for your faith to really become your own.
Andy:
I don’t think I’ve ever felt like it was okay to have a space to not have answers, or to not have space to be working through difficult ideas and concepts. I feel like a lot of us walk around as Christians, or in churches, and we have to put on a front that makes it look like we have it all together, or that we have every aspect of our faith nicely packaged up into a nice bow tie. And if you don’t, there was something wrong with you.
@AndyMineo
In one of my songs, I use a lyric, and it says, “The opposite of faith isn’t doubt; it’s when I got it all figured out.” For a long time, I thought that doubt was the enemy of faith. And what I realized is the real enemy of faith is when you have no questions, and no doubts, and everything’s figured out. Faith is hoping in things unseen, right? It’s being able to walk when you can’t see and to trust. I started seeing doubt very differently. I think when you doubt honestly, it can actually bring you into new places in your relationship with God. Like I feel like I had an adolescent faith, and now I’m getting into having an adult faith. And I don’t think God’s changed. I just think I’ve changed, and as I’ve changed, I’m seeing different aspects of who God is, because it’s applicable at different moments in my life, you know?
Jonathan:
Going back to your doubt being a scary thing. Do you see a connection between anxiety and spiritual doubt?
Andy:
Anxiety is when I’m afraid, and I don’t know how to control things. And, in those moments, thoughts can run rampant in your mind, and doubts, and questions, and concerns. The one thing that I need to look for in those moments is something that’s true, right? I need a word, or a reminder from somebody, or something about what is true in life to staple me back down when my thoughts want to take over. My anxiety wants to take over. My fear wants to take over. And I think that’s where for me, when I was returning to the Bible, and just starting to read it myself again, that’s when I was getting hit with those truth bombs, those anchors, those things that somehow resonate with my soul, that would quiet or calm my fears, or realign me during my times of doubt.
Jonathan:
For someone who may be just starting to question things, what would you say to them?
Andy:
@AndyMineo
I would say if someone’s wrestling with doubt, the first thing that you can do is know that your doubts do not make you a bad person and that your doubts don’t disqualify you from having faith. That doubt, and honesty, and vulnerability with God is actually a very beautiful thing. We look at the Scripture, we see David, and all kinds of people just shaking their fist at God, and being like, “Yo, what’s up?” Asking questions and angry. And I think there’s something beautiful about that—that says that God wants relationship with us, and that He can handle our fears, our outbursts, or our emotions with Him.
Some people just doubt because they don’t want to deal with the realities of things, or they don’t want to deal with truth, or be confronted by it. They don’t ever have to really engage with it. But to doubt honestly is to really press in and to seek. And I think that’s a healthy thing.
It’s like if you’ve been doing something your whole life, right? And then one day you say, I don’t know if this is good for me. You asked that question, you doubt. Maybe eating tuna fish every day isn’t good for me. And you start to research, and ask questions, and ask other people, and you realize, “Yo, this isn’t good!” They have all this mercury in my body. That doubt led you to a different action that was better for you. But to say, hey, don’t doubt anything or don’t have any doubts. I think that’d be an unhealthy way to live life. Doubt is the way that we question things and how we get clear answers.
Jonathan:
I can tell as you’re talking, you are still on a journey and learning, but walking that journey with what seems to be an inner confidence.
Andy:
Yeah. Today I woke up feeling like I am more okay with not having answers, and I think that leads me to be a lot more open to listening.
Jonathan:
Andy, I appreciate you, man. Appreciate your talent in your music, but really love the heart that drives that music and how you use your talent to connect with people and ultimately point them to God and His Word.
Andy:
Thanks—that means a lot.
