Justin Bieber wants to “live like Jesus,” hopes that doesn’t “come across weird”
Justin Bieber has lived a wild and crazy life in his brief 21 years on this planet, but lately it looks like he has been trying to rein himself in with a self-deprecating Comedy Central roast, an apology for all of the stupid stuff he does, and, um, an upcoming appearance in Zoolander 2. Now, thanks to a lengthy interview with Complex that features a ton of fancy/irritating scrolling effects, we now know that Bieber himself attributes this new attitude to a certain major religion. No, not Scientology (yet), but Christianity—you know, the Jesus one.
Bieber doesn’t consider himself traditionally religious, though, and he doesn’t believe that you have to go to church and blindly follow all of the rules you’re told to follow, because—as he brilliantly puts it—”You don’t need to go to church to be a Christian. If you go to Taco Bell, that doesn’t make you a taco.” (Also, “Christians leave such a bad taste in people’s mouths,” which will surely be a popular quote.) Basically, he just thinks this Jesus guy was a cool dude who said some cool stuff, and he has decided that his life would be better if he followed Jesus’ example a little more.
In fact, Bieber says he wants to “live like Jesus”—though he’s quick to clarify that he doesn’t want to “be Jesus” and he hopes that saying that doesn’t “come across weird.” Bieber’s theologizing loses the thread a little bit after that, but it sounds like his main point is that if there’s something he’s not happy about or doesn’t want to do, even though he knows it’s right, he thinks about how Jesus didn’t die on the cross so we could choose not to “feel what we should have to feel.” The gist of it is that believing in Jesus and God has helped Bieber overcome “situations where [he feels] judged,” so he doesn’t want to keep quiet about it anymore.
That all sounds weirdly reasonable for Bieber, but there are other parts in the interview where Bieber suggests that the Big Bang is more “preposterous” than Creationism (which was the answer to a question about James Corden’s carpool videos, oddly enough), that the time he pissed in a bucket was a classic Ozzy Osbourne-style “rock star” moment, and that the cop who arrested him for a DUI was just trying to get famous. So, really, the Bieber of today is still the Bieber we know and love(?), but now we know that this mild appreciation for the tenets of Christianity is the real driving force behind his actions, not the unchecked id of a guy who got too famous too fast. Or something like that.