Johnny Cash, the Gospel, and an Empire of Dirt

Dr. Russell Moore surmises one of many reasons why I really like this country artist.  In his article for the Henry Institute, Dr. Moore discusses the cross-culteral viscerality of Johnny Cash’s music.

Where contemporary country music often peppers Christianity (a quick reference to Sunday Meals and Jesus) with a host of other shallow references like beer, trucks, and lost love, Cash’s music deeply explores the pangs of death and the hope of Jesus.  While I would never assert that all of his music does this, his songs do always ‘feel’ black with a small light of conviction (often gospel conviction).  Of course, he was called ‘the man in black,’ but it is the poetry and weight with which he carried this persona (it was simply a persona) that communicates a profound understanding of pain, death and loneliness.  His characature was a reflection of his heart.

In his later days, this came through so vividly.  One can’t help but identify with a man suddenly finding himself alone and facing death asking–What is all worth it?  Has it all been real?

While others were doing commemorating performances of their past songs, Cash was singing about Revelation such as in ”When the Man Comes Around” or warning people that “God’s Gonna Cut You Down.”

This was a man coming face to face with death and the weight of judgment.

Did Johnny Cash make it to heaven? I can’t say.  He professed Christ frequently, and he recorded some of my favorite southern gospel songs.  But was it all show? I hope not for his sake.

Here’s an excerpt from that article from Dr. Moore about Johnny Cash:

King Solomon never won a Grammy but, like Johnny Cash, he discovered the vanity of fame and finance as death approaches. The faith in American V is less like a celebrity testimony at a Billy Graham crusade and much more like the desperate faith of a crucified robber, sobbing as he drowns in his own blood: “Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom” (Luke 23:42).

Here’s the song that echoes with a lonely man looking back at it all as an empire of dirt:

Hearing this song, I am reminded of John Piper’s echoing cry: “Don’t Waste Your Life.”  I recall the haunting story of a lonely man coming down to the front in his old age, bawling the words “I wasted it! I wasted it!

This morning I read Acts 20.  Verses 24 and 25 captured me.  Paul, addressing the Ephesian elders, is about to leave them, and he says:

But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.  And now, behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again.

In the previous verses (22-23), Paul said he did not know what was going to happen to him, but he was sure by the Holy Spirit that imprisonment and affliction awaited him.  He was right.  Paul, for the sake of Christ’s gospel, was martyred.

I was close to tears much like those Ephesian elders who cared so deeply for him and what he did for them for the cause of the gospel.

I was shaken because I thought of my life.  Will I look back and think I wasted my life?  Can I stand with as much conviction as Paul in my farewell and share in his words.  He accounted his life of no value or as precious to himself for the sake of the gospel of the kingdom.  Will I?

Oh God, create that heart in me! Your gospel is just too powerful and your kingdom is just too glorious for silence and passivity.  May I not look back on my life as just an empire of dirt.

Working with you for the cause of Christ’s Gospel,

Vince R.

Worshipping In Tune with the Standard

Like I recently said, I want to pick up the guitar.  I tried the other night, yuck! It’s so out of tune after all these years.  My piano is out of tune somewhat too so that doesn’t really work.  I’ll wait, then, until I find someone else who is closer to that “standard” of proper tuning to which we can both conform.  Hmm, sort of made me think of Tozer… 

“Has it ever occured to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other?  They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow.  So one hundred worshippers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become ‘unity’ conscious and turn their eyes from God to strive for closer fellowship.” -A.W. Tozer, Pursuit of God

You want to get closer to your brother or sister in Christ? Why don’t you both ponder the Lord?  That’ll help.

Working with you to tune together to that great Standard,

Vince R.

A Pleasing Melody to our Father…

I think I’m going to try to pick up the guitar again.  It kind of stinks knowing that you have musical understanding, a deep appreciation for the processes of it, a longing to sit by yourself and sing to the Father, and most of all to have no musical accompaniment with which to do any of it.  I can play the piano reasonably well.  (Actually, not really, but give me a good week of free time and I can learn a piece of music and play it.)

Unfortunately, I don’t have that kind of time, and I don’t have that kind of instrument handy.  Piano’s are kind of big.  So then, I remembered my guitar.

Such a simple instrument:  Easy enough to carry around, and accessible enough to retreive for a good interval of completely wasted portions of your day. (Time just keeps going, and us college students seem to waste it frequently.) But I guess that is the beauty of it: To pick up an instrument and play it, even when that paper is due tomorrow.  So nice…

I thought of what Bono once prophetically sang, “All I have is a red guitar, three chords, and the truth.”

Well, I don’t know how much of what Bono says is true, but I do know that it is a powerful thing to see a man of God (who knows the truth) with a guitar, singing to the Lord.  But then again, I don’t want anybody to see me either.  I’m not singing for them.

Recently (over the past eight or nine months) I’ve gone back to the roots of my music appreciation.  I do love film scores immensely (Williams, Zimmer, Horner of today, and Steiner, Rosza and Herrmann of the past).  I love twentieth century music from artists like Shostakovich and even Barber.  I like to spend my moments listening to the canon of Mozart (yeah, he’s a genius).  His rhythmic consistentcy charms the brain waves and promotes deep thinking.  (Just study his consistent on-beat rhythms, they match the thinking patterns of the mindwives, it’s a well-proven study.)  This, of course, reminds me of how surely there is a Creator.  God is the best mathematician, best scientist, best music theorist.  He created them all.  It all points to order.  Irreducible reductionism. (Take that exhistentialist chaos theorists!)

“Chaos is dull.” -G.K. Chesterton

But why an appreciation for that genre of music remains, I’ve been suddenly enamoured with the music of the sixties and seventies: Clapton, Dylan, Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Van Morrison, Eagles, Santana and so forth.  Yeah, I might dare say, they don’t play music like that anymore.  

Anyway, music is amazing.  It’s no wonder God commands us to sing and make music unto him.  He created it!

Psalm 150

“Praise the LORD, Praise God in his sanctuary;  praise him in his mighty heavens! Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his excellent greatness!  Praise him with the trumpet sound; praise him with the lute and harp! Praise him with tambourine and dance (INTERESTING!); praise him with strings and pipe! Praise him with sounding cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals!  Let everything that has breath praise the LORD! Praise the LORD!”

Think of it! A hall of believers totally entranced, enamoured, enchanted and enthused in complete communion with one another, praising the Lord with one accord and following the commandments of the Psalms.  Yes, if you want to know how to worship, spend time in the Psalms.

But also I know that this is not going to happen in this life time.  If you see something happening perfectly like what I just described then pinch yourself because you’re in glory!  But friends, I said it before and I’ll say it again, “Don’t let the biblical doctrine of Indwelling Sin serve as an excuse to continue in it.”

Sure, we’re not a glorified people yet, but that’s no excuse to disregard the clearly stated, clearly decreed commands of Scripture.  What blasphemy to think of it as an excuse!  You are either woefully misled or blinded by Satan to think that God’s people can continue in sin because they have not been glorified yet.

But, why would they?  If God’s spirit dwells in you, you can’t help but desire and strive to follow the commandment.  The Spirit will bear you witness if you don’t:

Ephesians 5:18-21

“And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

I color coded this scripture so that you could see how the Greek text works.  The Holy Spirit, speaking through Paul, makes one distinct contrast.

“And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.” Ephesians 5:18

Here is the contrast: Don’t be drunk with wine because that is a life controlled by the flesh.  Rather, (here’s the contrast) be filled with the Spirit, or more literally rendered, be controlled by the Spirit. That’s a life of a Christian.

The Holy Spirit dwells (or makes his residence) in Christians, and by the very nature of that truth, the Spirit (naturally) controls them.

(Notice the way Paul repeats this for the Colossian church in Colossians 3:16 in which he neatly ties the indwelling of the Holy Spirit together with the indwelling of the word of Christ.)

Christians no longer seek to be controlled by the flesh, “for that is debauchery.”  Sure, Paul cites the very clearly defined commandment against drunkenness (which is a sin), but Paul emphasizes this as truly a work of the flesh.  (See Galatians 5:19-21, specifically verse 21 which cites drunkenness as a work of the flesh.)

Now that we saw the contrast, let’s see the color coded contents of a person controlled by the Spirit.  God says that a person controlled by the Spirit will have at least these three contents in their life:

“…addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

You see the three contents of a person controlled by the Spirit of God here.

1.)  Show me a person who sings to the Lord with their heart, I’ll show you a person controlled by the Spirit.

2.)  Show me a person who gives thanks always and for everything, and I’ll show you a person controlled by the Spirit.

3.)  Show me a person who submits to the proper biblical authority in their life (the contexts: wives to husbands, husbands loving wives, children to parents, fathers nurturing children, slaves to masters, masters to the Master as in Ephesians 5:22-6:9), and I’ll show you a person controlled by the Spirit.

But for our purposes, we note the first content:

“…addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart…” Ephesians 5:19

A Spirit filled person wants to sing to the Father with thier hearts.  As the Spirit moves me, I just want to sing!

Robert Lowery, Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley to name only few… (I’m strongly, strongly, strongly outspoken for the preservation of the hymns of the faith, especially when this text tells us to sing them.)

Chris Tomlin, some David Crowder, Third Day, Matt Redman to name a few writers of spiritual songs.

And yes, even the Psalms themselves.  I can’t understand why today’s church doesn’t sing them when this text says we should.  “We might sound Presbyterian,” they say.  Well, I don’t care about sounding Presbyterian, I want to be obedient to my Father.

And so, I end:  I just might pick up the guitar again.  Not for you in so much as I’m trying to please you.  I don’t seek to please you with my singing or playing.  But if my pleasing you in them serves to please my Father, I will.  This text does say, “…addressing one another.”  But notice it’s final words: ”….[sing] to the Father with your heart.”

And so, I will, with or without an instrument.

Working with you to create a melody pleasing to our Father,

Vince R.

All texts taken from the English Standard Version, 2005.