Sean “Diddy” Combs verdict is in

Sean “Diddy” Combs is a former American rapper, record producer, and record executive. He was born in Harlem and worked as a talent director at Uptown Records before founding his own label in 1993. He is credited with discovering and developing numerous musical artists, including Mary J. Blige, Usher, and the Notorious B.I.G.

His debut solo album sold over seven million copies in the US. He won three Grammy Awards, three BET Awards, and two MTV Video Music Awards.

In 2023, he settled a high-profile sexual assault and abuse lawsuit filed by his former partner, Cassie Ventura. In the following months, numerous lawsuits regarding sexual misconduct were filed against him. 

In 2024, after several properties tied to him were raided by the Department of Homeland Security, he was charged with sex trafficking and racketeering. He pleaded not guilty and was denied bail three times.

Today, a jury acquitted him of the sex trafficking and racketeering charges that could have put him behind bars for life. However, it convicted him of a prostitution-related offense that could send him to prison for as long as a decade and is likely to end his career in music, fashion, and television.

I have never heard one of his songs or seen one of his videos, and thus have no means or motive to comment on his artistic career. But I do want to make two points regarding his trial and verdict that I believe are foundationally relevant to our nation as we celebrate our independence this week.

One: Our past does not necessarily dictate our future.

Combs’s father, Melvin Earl Combs, served in the US Air Force but was also an associate of convicted New York drug lord Frank Lucas. At age thirty-three, Melvin was shot dead while sitting in his car on Central Park West. His son was only two years old.

As a result, Combs grew up in poverty but eventually became one of the wealthiest musical artists in the world, topping Forbes’ annual hip-hop rich list in 2014 and 2017.

America is not unique as a nation where anyone can become anything, but our culture and system of governance certainly encourage such ambitions. For example, President Calvin Coolidge grew up in rural Vermont and ran a small law practice in Massachusetts. Janet and I visited his home in Vermont a few years ago and were impressed by its modest size and lack of opulence.

Harry Truman ran a men’s clothing store that failed before becoming a county judge, US senator, and president following FDR’s death. James Garfield was a carpenter and janitor before becoming a college president, a decorated military officer, and the US president. And Abraham Lincoln famously grew up in abject poverty and had about eighteen months of formal education because he worked to supplement his family’s income.

By contrast, much of Europe in the colonial era was dominated by cultural castes in which people lived their entire lives within a specific social stratum. Advancement beyond one’s “place” was unusual and often disparaged. 

Monarchs inherited their thrones and ruled by divine right. Few of our presidents could ever have ascended to leadership in such societies.

“Self-evident” or “sacred & undeniable”?

This commitment to the rights and advancement of the individual was central to our founders’ declaration that “all men are created equal” and that we are endowed by God with “certain Unalienable rights” to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” But while the Declaration described these truths as “self-evident,” this was not the way they were first characterized.

Thomas Jefferson wrote that these truths were “sacred & undeniable.” But Benjamin Franklin changed it to “self-evident.” Franklin considered the phrase too religious and worried that it might invite theological disputation. 

From then to now, Franklin’s edit has masked the fact that our most basic rights come from God, not humans, and that they are best preserved when we are rightly related to him.

Otherwise, if these rights are indeed “Unalienable” by virtue of being self-evident, why are they so seldom found in human history? Why were they lacking so significantly in England, forcing the colonists to rebel against their mother country? Why are they lacking in Communist China, North Korea, Iran, Russia, and so many other countries today?

It is a simple fact that the “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” that Sean Combs pursued and so many millions of others as well are revealed by God’s word and ensured by the transforming power of his Spirit.

Two: Material prosperity does not preclude personal failure.

The converse fact of Sean Combs’ story and American history is that our system, while enabling people to succeed, also holds them accountable to higher morality and conduct in ways few other systems in history have done.

It is notable that Combs, for all his wealth and fame, was unable to avoid the lawsuits he faced or the guilty verdict rendered by a jury of his peers. 

In much of the world across much of our history, this would not have been true. “Might makes right” is the story of so many nations and cultures. The “golden rule” is typically, “He who has the gold makes the rule.”

Kim Il Sung and his son and grandson have oppressed North Koreans to horrific degrees while immeasurably enriching themselves in the process. I have seen firsthand how Fidel Castro, with an estimated net worth of $900 million at the time of his death in 2016, did the same to Cubans.

Hamas’s three top leaders are worth a total of $11 billion and live in luxury in the sanctuary of Qatar. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is estimated to have a net worth $100 million. All the while, the people they supposedly serve have no recourse to end their tyranny or advance themselves.

By contrast, America is governed by laws to which our leaders are as accountable as those they serve. This was by intent. 

The founders did not design our democracy because they thought we were so good by nature that we deserved to govern ourselves. To the contrary, they knew us to be so motivated by power and self-interest that they created a system of checks and balances by which no individual could obtain unaccountable power over others.

This realistic understanding of human nature was, like our “Unalienable rights,” the product of the biblical worldview. 

Scripture clearly teaches that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). The Lord warned, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). As a result, we need a system of governance that restricts our sinful impulses and protects us from each other.

We have seen this system at work in Sean Combs’ guilty verdict. But it owes its foundations to biblical truth.

How to “make men good, wise, and happy”

We are celebrating this week the birth of a nation built on the principles of self-advancement and mutual accountability. As we have seen, both find their origins in God’s word and will. This is to be expected: the Lord who gave us the Bible also created us and therefore knows us. His word shows us how to live in the ways we were designed by him to live.

This is why John Adams could say, “The Bible contains the most profound philosophy, the most perfect morality, and the most refined policy that ever was conceived upon the earth.” His son John Quincy Adams agreed, calling God’s word “of all books in the world that which contributes most to make men good, wise, and happy.”

Now it is our privilege and responsibility to live by this truth so fully that others will want to live by it as well. And to share this truth with everyone we can, whenever we can.

We can give our nation and our fellow Americans no greater gift.