Mystery of Iniquity: Loving Jesus as a Black Girl
Faith is shaped by more than sermons and Sunday school- it is influenced by culture, music, and the voices we listen to. For Black girls, the experience of loving Jesus often includes wrestling with identity, confronting stereotypes, and unlearning what the world taught about worth and worship. It’s a path shaped not only by the church, but also by resistance, artistry, and self-discovery. At BOON, we recognize a wide spectrum of “faith influencers” (a term we coined to reflect the wide variety of people that influence the faith of a young person)—from youth pastors and parents to mentors and even music artists like Lauryn Hill.
In this blog, we explore how Lauryn Hill’s image, identity, and influence have helped shape the faith of Black women and girls. Her voice, both literal and metaphorical, has offered permission to question, unlearn, and reimagine what it means to follow Jesus. Her lyrics, public persona, and legacy offer a blueprint for spiritual resistance, radical humility, and authentic belief.
Image: Lauryn Hill’s Public Persona as Resistance
Lauryn Hill’s image has always meant more than beauty or celebrity—it’s been a form of resistance. She emerged in hip-hop as a theologically curious voice, blending scripture with poetry, and confronting the structures that tried to define her. As her career progressed, she became more vocal about the weight of public expectation, once admitting, “I had created this public persona, this public illusion, and it held me hostage.”
Her music—especially the defiant “I Get Out”—calls listeners to reject societal pressures and embrace transformation through faith. In her vulnerability, she echoes Romans 12:2: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” For Black girls who often live under intense cultural pressure, Hill’s image gives permission to resist, redefine, and reclaim their own spiritual and personal identity.
Identity: Humility and Self-Discovery
Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was a defining moment, but it was just the beginning of her spiritual evolution. As she stepped away from the spotlight, she leaned into faith and healing, embodying Proverbs 3:5–7: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”
Her MTV Unplugged performance, raw and unpolished, became a sacred offering of honesty and humility. She said, “The more I focus less on myself, the more I realize I can be used to spread a message.” Through her music, Hill taught a generation that loving Jesus requires not perfection, but presence—humility, awareness, and the courage to be transformed.
Influence: A Call to Rebel Against Oppression
Hill’s artistry is both personal and prophetic. Songs like “I Find It Hard to Say (Rebel)” challenge injustice and offer a spiritual lens through which to see societal struggle. Her message resonates with Ephesians 6:12: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against... the cosmic powers over this present darkness.”
To many Black women, Hill was the first to make the Bible sound like poetry. Her music, woven with biblical truths, showed that faith could be liberating—not limiting. At BOON, we call people like Lauryn Hill faith influencers—people who shape the spiritual imagination of young people, whether or not they hold a title. They’re parents, mentors, coaches, content creators—and sometimes, they’re the neighbor who lends eggs with kindness and grace.
In this Women’s History Month blog, we collaborate with faith influencer Mariah Crawford, a girls' track coach and licensed minister in Dallas, Texas to explore the ways Lauryn Hill’s music and legacy have shaped the faith and identity of Black women and girls.
Q&A with Mariah Crawford
BOON: What have you been processing about Ms. Lauryn Hill lately?
Mariah: Relating scripture to her lyrics. People are saying on social media now, “Oh, her album wasn't about a man, it was about Jesus.” People are now just getting those revelations. So for me, it’s cool to listen to her music a little more and get some more background, and pull out more lyrics, and then realize how literally every song that she writes is related to Scripture, or there's some type of verse in there.
BOON: What makes Ms. Lauryn Hill your favorite rapper?
Mariah: As a female rapper, I feel like I relate to her a lot, just because of her kind of radical rebellion. Also she loves the Lord. Thinking about the Fugees and, social justice and speaking about things that matter. But also, they were cool. Street wear fly. She wasn't trying to be like everybody else ever, even if she felt like she was trying to fit into a box at a certain point, she was always herself. And for me, I always related to the girls who were kind of tomboyish, because I'm a little tomboy. And I love poetry and her rapping is very poetic. She's one of the best rappers in general, not like female rappers, when you really listen to her lyrics, she's talking every line and she's saying something.
BOON: Do you use her life or her lyrics as inspiration as you walk in ministry, or as you navigate as a coach? Or to define any aspect of yourself?
Mariah: Thinking about Unplugged 2.0. One of the things I loved about it is that you can tell that she was going through something. I grew up in sports and being a certain “type” of teenager - an A student and all those things. You have a certain “whatever” that you have to keep up. And then you get to a point where you feel like you can't mess up, or you have to be this perfect thing, or else you're a bad person. Or at least, I felt like I couldn’t make mistakes and all these things. Specifically in Unplugged 2.0, she talked a lot about how we are repressed and how we try to stay in these boxes for people. She talks about how she started to get caught up in the matrix of people's expectations of who she was supposed to be. And she was saying it started to make her sick, and she couldn't create, she couldn't write, she couldn't do anything. And just realizing that it takes humility to serve God and also to use your gift. And humility means that you're not perfect. It means that you're human. And I feel like that's like, the biggest thing, at least right now in my life, I think embracing my humanity is the way that I'm looking at her interviews. The quote where she says at the 1999 Essence Awards, “I want to let young people know that it is not a burden to love Him and to represent him and to be who you are as fly and as hot and as ‘whatever’ and still love God and to serve Him, it’s not a contradiction.” To know that those two things are not contradictions, it’s all one thing. That's the biggest thing she's been teaching me.
BOON: Do you have any other memorable encounters with her music that you've experienced?
Mariah: I have two - first, the interludes on The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. I don't know how to explain what they do to me. I love children, I love young people. Like, that's my heart. What I love about that album is how it engages young people in just real conversations, and you can hear them expressing themselves. I don't know how to explain how that's impacting me, but it has, especially now, being around children all the time.
You can ask them questions, and they don't know. One of the hardest things for me is not getting kids to be quiet, it’s getting kids to think. That's the thing I'm tackling right now. That's the biggest obstacle right now, it's getting them to be curious.
The second is from Unplugged 2.0 “I Gotta Find Peace of Mind” at the end. She's crying, and she says, “Every day is another chance to get it right.” And she just says, “What a joy it is to be alive.” And she keeps crying saying, “What a merciful, merciful God, and that every day is another chance to get it right.” Like, that's the whole point. We get another chance. And that always makes me cry. We get another chance to get it right, you know. Like every single day, the Lord is gracious and merciful and wakes us up, and is with us. We might fall again, but guess what, we get another chance to get it right.
BOON: There's freedom in that, and it's a releasing of guilt that could potentially live in something that we might have experienced or done. Do you feel like any of that influences or impacts the way you coach, lead or minister?
Mariah: I really try to see people as human beings, especially kids. You have to see them and know they're going to mess up, right? That's the beauty of a child, they're going to mess up, they're going to make mistakes, because they’re in this space of trial and error, as we all are. And so for me, the beauty is they get another chance where they get to show up again and do better or try harder or fall again, but still learn. Today, I felt a little bad because I got onto some kids, and I felt like I could have worded what I wanted to say better. But still, I try to be very intentional about letting them know, like I'm not shaming you, like you're good, but we have to grow like. I'm not gonna shut it down on you. So I think grace allows people the space to grow. You have to give people another chance. Because I gotta give me another chance, and I want people to give me another chance. So who am I to look at anybody else and say, “man, you're done for” that just doesn’t really make sense to me. That's not loving. Lauryn Hill has truly taught me about humility and humility hurts sometimes. Sometimes you have to give people another chance. I don’t want to give you another chance. Or that, sometimes that person can be yourself like, sometimes we don't want to give ourselves another chance because we feel guilty, or people make us feel ashamed, or we make ourselves feel ashamed. You know, the enemy tries to attack us in that way. I just think that another chance is just a grace thing for people and for yourself.
BOON: Talk about humility. There's a lot of weight in there.
Mariah: I think for me, humility is getting out of your own way. Oftentimes we think we know who we are, and humility causes us to throw that away, which is hard because it's uncomfortable. Sometimes when we throw away who we think we are, and God shows us who we really are, we're like, “Oh, I'm that? That's not cute.” We have to see the issue or see the dirt to start getting clean. And that's what humility is. But I think it's hard to see our dirt, we don't want to see our dirt. I'm in this space, which I think I will be for the rest of my life, this space of embracing my humanity. Because I think my lack of humility affected how I heard God. I felt I couldn't hear God, because I was starting to become arrogant and prideful, and then I think it allowed the enemy to make me bask in condemnation, shame, and guilt. Just all these things that just didn't allow me to do the work. But humility is freedom. It hurts because it can seem like God is pointing out all this bad stuff about you, but it's really for your benefit. Humility helps you see God clearer because you get out of the way. It's layers to it, like, you pull back one layer, you're like, “okay, I'm good.” Then, you pull back another layer of who you are and realize there’s more there that needs to be addressed. Once you see yourself clearly, you can see God clearly.
BOON: If you could ask Lauryn Hill one question, or if you could have a conversation with her about anything, what would it be?
Mariah: I would want to talk to her about her mistakes, or what she feels her mistakes are and how she’s worked through them. Well not mistakes, just her growth. That's probably what she would say - not mistakes but the things that have helped her grow.
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Lauryn Hill’s music continues to be a source of faith, affirmation, and identity for Black women and girls. At BOON, we celebrate the many ways faith influencers—artists like Lauryn Hill and mentors like Mariah Crawford—help shape the spiritual journeys of the next generation.
ABOUT MARIAH CRAWFORDMariah Crawford is a Dallas, Texas native and graduate of Drake University. Mariah is a licensed minister of the Gospel and assistant girls track and field coach. She is also a fervent lover of Jesus, art, and writing, specifically about Jesus.
