From 9:15 on Sunday evening until now we have all had our fair share of lambasting Kanye for his outburst at the VMAs. If you haven’t heard the story, the short of it is that when Taylor Swift was giving her acceptance speech for winning the Best Female Video speech, West rushed the stage, grabbed the mic and openly disagreed with her win by saying Beyonce deserved the award.

Last night, West appeared on Jay Leno and did an impromptu interview where he apologized to Swift, confessed that he felt ashamed, contemplated what his mother would have said to him about his behavior and altogether looked like he had a rough day. Many of his peers ran rough shod on him as they decried his behavior. Pink, Kelly Clarkson, and Katy Perry were all noted as cursing West. Even President Obama, in an off-the-record comment, called West a jacka**. It’s essentially been a war of words as public people and private ones, present company included, shared their opinions on what they thought about West’s behavior.

Proverbs 18:21 says “Life and death are in the power of the tongue.” Everything we say has power, whether we say it to the person’s face or behind their back. It all creates an atmosphere that will either promote growth or death. Right now, Kanye West needs to grow and the only way that he can do that is if we, the general public, his peers in the entertainment business, and even the President of the United States of America, shift our focus from talking about him to praying about him. Nothing can have as much power to affect change in his life than the prayers of people who genuinely care about his well being as a human being. Your talking about how much of a jerk you think he is, how wrong you think he was, and whether his apology was genuine is inconsequential if you have not taken the highest position and lowered yourself to pray for him.

For me, last night was a turning point in this whole debacle. Watching Kanye West on Leno made me feel sad for him. His remorse and sadness were palpable as he sat in the chair across from Leno trying to gather himself and trying to explain to the world the reason for his behavior on Sunday night. I sat there watching a broken man who never takes the time out to deal with his demons. He admitted that his hurt, from not grieving the death of his mother as he should have, caused someone else’s hurt. He has essentially been running through life with a wound that he has been covering up. But now, that the wound is exposed and we know part of why he acts the way he does we must intercede on his behalf in prayer.

Our job now is not to figure out whether he was being honest on the Jay Leno interview or call him anymore names than we already did on Sunday night and all day Monday. No, our job now is to use that same energy we used to be critics and become compassionate. Our job is to forget about how much we dislike him for his outbursts–the one from Sunday and his numerous others– and his ego, and remember him as a child of God stuck between two worlds. We must pray for him. And if we cannot pray, we must do like the old mothers used to tell us, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”