The Horrible Heroes of the Protestant Reformation

You will often hear in sermons detailing how God can use inherently imperfect people for great things that Abraham could be a coward, David committed adultery and conspiracy to commit murder, and Simon Peter had a short fuse and could be wishy washy. These Biblical examples are all true and accurate, and are testaments to God's faithfulness to use us, flawed and fallible, to do mighty and wondrous things. But, you will seldom if ever hear among these examples the likes of Martin Luther, John Knox, or any of the most pivotal figures of what we came to call the Reformation.

Being a member of a Calvinist church, I often hear great reverence of the titans of the Protestant Reformation, the great theologians who helped steer the Christian faith out of the clutches of the Catholic Church. The immense respect for these men to which I've been subject is one of the reasons why I was so dismayed and disappointed over time to read that many of these figures were, frankly, some rather vile people.

It should have come as no surprise that they were dirty, rotten sinners like me, because that's what we all are, from the pulpit to the porcelain. But when one is surrounded by such high praise for these men - men who are seldom, if ever, mentioned in the same ilk as an adulterer like David or a murderer like Moses to point out how God can use the worst of the worst - it makes the discovery of their "dark sides" much more devastating. If one is well versed in the flaws of Biblical heroes, but those who teach them dare not utter anything negative about Reformation heroes, a kind of subconscious reverence can be built for these men, and one is prone to forget that they, too, were awful human beings who God used to further His kingdom. 

Martin Luther was an unrepentant reviler and persecutor of Jews; John Knox preached violence - advocating for the assassinations of rulers deemed evil, and publicly applauding the unwarranted slaying of Queen Mary's servant David Riccio by a band of conspirators - and was even involved in the murder of one Cardinal Beaton; John Foxe played a bit fast and loose with facts and history in his celebrated Book of Martyrs, and even praised some corrupt or immoral figures - such as Anne Boleyn and Don Carlos, Prince of Asturias - simply because they allegedly embraced the Protestant cause (chillingly similar to many "evangelicals," whatever that means, who praise Donald Trump for his empty use of Christianity while willfully ignoring his unrepentant and base character).

Again, it shouldn't have been so shocking that these men, as fallible and fallen as Hezekiah or Job, were guilty of some awful deeds, just as I am. But I assert that our praise of these Reformers has become so borderline idolatrous that we are prone to forget - or willing to leave out - what despicable acts accompanied their efforts. Christians should openly condemn the atrocities and seedy acts of those that many praise to the point of portraying them as blameless and spotless. This is the same mistake that we Americans made with the likes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson when we heralded them as heroes of our country; patriots and visionaries they were, but we swept their sins under the rug for so long that our very culture became affected to the point of serving them as flawless idols.

But what a Christian must also remember is the same lesson we're taught from the Bible and the pulpit about Peter, Paul, David, and a slew of other Biblical figures - that we are all fallen human beings. Scripture tells us, "in Your sight no one living is righteous" (Psalm 143:2), "there is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin" (Ecclesiastes 7:20), and most memorably, "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).

There can be, however, a difference when looking at the lives of David - who repented of his crimes against God and strove to live a just life - and Martin Luther, of whom there is no evidence that he ever repented in his hatred towards Jews. But if God can use those who don't even believe in Him for His purpose - Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians for example - then He can certainly use those who proclaim Him but continue in evil ways: the most obvious example being the Pharisees who were among the instruments through which Jesus went to the cross to fulfill God's purpose of shedding His blood to redeem you and me for our multitudes of sins.

Again, the most disheartening aspect of reading about the flagrant evils of many Protestant Reformers is the amount of heroic praise they are given by the Church today, and the fact that their work was so important in Church history. It can become tiring to hear "God uses flawed people for great things," so this blog's closing passage from the Book of Revelation puts it into much better perspective. We must remember that the flaws of Knox and Luther is irrelevant in the bigger picture, in the story of Christ's Church, against which "the gates of Hades shall not prevail" (Matthew 16:18). If every Christian in the world today were to turn away from Christ and convert to scientology, that would not render Him any less true. To claim that it's the faithfulness of Christians who make God all-powerful is nothing but laughable vanity. 

The bigotry of Martin Luther can never render Jesus' love and grace ineffective. If a hypocrite proclaims Jesus as Lord yet does not obey Him, the hypocrite is only a hypocrite, but Jesus is still Lord. It is Christ who overcame - not John Calvin. 

"And I saw in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne a scroll written inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals. Then I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, 'Who is worthy to open the scroll and to loose its seals?' And no one in heaven or on the earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll, or to look at it. So I wept much, because no one was found worthy to open and read the scroll, or to look at it. But one of the elders said to me, 'Do not weep. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open the scroll and to loose its seven seals.'" -Revelation 5:1-5

Poem: "White Stetsons"

My man is around the corner 

He’ll be here soon

Nothing between us but disorder 

and the glow of the moon

in its most dangerous phase

I’ll put him down with a single shot

As long as he hears my catchphrase 

My words his last thought

as all is over and all goes dim

My true grit the last thing he’ll see

A muzzle flash for him

A blaze of glory for me

I can see those white Stetsons now

White Stetsons on the heads of men

Real men, lawmen, 

leathery with bushy brows

Men with consciences that wore them thin

Men with drawls who take the Lord’s name in vain – 

but only when justice is raped

only uttered for the USA

Cursing, yes, though not the same

As profanity crudely escaped 

I can see those white Stetsons 

filling the halls

and one on each of my arms

escorting me to a room with four gray walls

and interrogators with dusty charms

I’ll tell them I did it for love of country 

and in a manner of speaking, my queen

I’ll tell them the truth and nothing but

These men, these real men, 

lawmen, nothing they haven’t seen, 

intuition under their belts and under their guts 

they’ll know my aim was true

They’ll be kind though they’re crude

and built like sailors

“I’d have done the same if I were you”

is all I need to cleanse my wretched life 

of all its wretched failures

When they send me to Washington, DC – 

surely they’ll send me there – 

I’ll miss those white Stetsons on salty men

They don’t wear Stetsons in Washington 

Just lots of oil in slicked back hair

and maybe a fedora now and then 

They don’t have salt in Washington, DC

(though they’re certainly not bloodless)

But I forgive the pencil pushers

and the Chief Justice

They weren’t born with true grit like me

Common Questions About Hell

What is hell?

Simply put, hell is eternity without God.

Fire and torment are things we often associate with the concept of eternal damnation, and they are indeed Biblical descriptions – Jesus Christ says, “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Luke 12:38), and the apostle John writes of his vision of the Judgment before the Great White Throne, “anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:15). But what makes hell truly hell is the complete and irrevocable absence of the love, mercy, and Spirit of God.

In that respect, hell is an extension of how one lived his or her life on Earth. So too is eternal life in heaven. If a person gives their life to Christ and lives and abides in Him in their temporary, mortal life, they will share that same fellowship with Him, in His eternal presence, in “a new heaven and a new earth” (Revelation 21:1). On the flip side of this coin, one who lived their mortal life on Earth in an unrepentant state of disbelief and rejection of the salvation offered to them by Jesus Christ, accomplished through His blood on the cross, will continue to live without Him and the light and love for which He once suffered to attain for them. This absence of God's love is manifested in the form of everlasting agony. The non-believer continues to have it their way – an existence without God.

The phrase “hell was not made for humans” is often used. This refers to Jesus’ words about those who will be turned away from entering heaven. He describes a place “prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). It’s not necessarily as if God has said, “let there be a place of torment for people who don’t believe in Me.” But even so, there remains a hideous place of everlasting anguish to which the wicked and unbelieving will go.

Where is hell?

The caricature often painted of hell is a pit at the center of the earth. In fact, many Christians who lived during the first century and the years following believed that Sodom and Gomorrah were still burning far below the earth's surface.

But if we look at this from the eternal viewpoint, we see that this cannot be the case. Eternity for those who accepted Jesus Christ involves, again, “a new heaven and a new earth” in the eternal city of New Jerusalem. Being that the currently existing planets, galaxies, and their elements will be no more when Jesus returns to judge all souls, hell cannot exist under the earth's surface, not even in its very molten core. So we must think of hell as another realm, so to speak, not unlike the concepts of “Hades” or “the Netherworld.”

A notable difference between the Biblical concept of hell and those of pagan religions is that hell is not simply a “land of the dead” – not only will the dead rise for the Judgment, but so too will those who are alive at the unknown hour when Jesus Christ returns: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10). Concerning the Lord's second advent, the apostle Paul comforts believers who despaired at the thought of their fellow believers who had died: “I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-17).

This makes it clear that Jesus' return will not be seen only by the dead, but by the living as well.

A place of spiritual torment exists while we on Earth still live. Jesus says just as much in a harrowing tale He tells found in Luke, chapter 16, wherein He describes what happens after the deaths of a sinful rich man and a poor man named Lazarus. (This passage is often incorrectly thought of as a parable, but unlike other parables, the text never indicates that Jesus means this story as a fable or a metaphor, as the New Testament so often does with His actual parables; it does not conclude with Jesus Himself speaking a coda or summary of the parable or its meaning, as that is found in the words of the people involved in the story themselves – including one Jesus refers to by his specific name rather than strictly “a certain beggar.”)

In this story, the merciless rich man finds himself in fiery damnation. The rich man, realizing he has no hope of escape, begs Abraham, to whom he speaks from his agony, to send Lazarus to warn his brothers of this danger: “'I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.'”

(It is also worth noting that Abraham tells the condemned rich man, “between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us”).

Who goes to hell?

The answer to this question is not: gays, addicts, suicide victims, or saved people who backslide or make mistakes. 

It has often been erroneously said that suicide in the “unpardonable sin.” This is not true. The Biblical “unpardonable sin” cannot be committed today, as it applied to the Pharisees in Jesus' generation who attributed His power to demons rather than to God. Jesus proclaims, and Mark commentates, in Mark 3:28-30: “'Assuredly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they may utter; but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is subject to eternal condemnation' – because they said, 'He has an unclean spirit.'”

As that sin cannot be committed today, as the Pharisees of that day are all dead, the “unpardonable sin” is more of an unpardonable state – the state of disbelief, the denial of Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the only way to salvation. This rejection come by atheistic means, by the denial of Jesus through the worship of other, false gods, or empty-hearted or heretical use of His name (those who unrepentantly blaspheme God by teaching false doctrines that are not found in Scripture, those who twist and distort God's word and teach lies. Revelation 22:15 mentions “whoever loves and practices a lie” as among those who are “outside” New Jerusalem).

It should be noted that when “sinners” are mentioned as those condemned to hell, this refers to unrepentant sinners: those whose flagrant disregard for God's warning attempts to make a mockery of His commands; those who have been rebuked and taught many times, but deny that God is against their doings and continue in them with abandon and delight.

Those who use the name of Jesus in an empty and insincere manner for personal gain, but whose hearts are far from Him, will find themselves in hell. Jesus declared, “Hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying: ‘These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men’” (Matthew 15:7-8).

Jesus describes those who emptily use His name but do not heed His commandments, and what awaits them at the final Judgment: ““Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked” and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’ “Then they also will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life”” (Matthew 25:41-46).

How can a spirit feel physical agony?

This question comes from our limited perception of spiritual things. We cannot help this limitation as we are in our current condition, spiritual but bound by flesh and elements, though we look forward to a day when we will be free of our earthly limitations and understand wonders and mysteries of God. As Paul writes, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

Paul later writes, concerning this dichotomy and rigor of living spiritual lives in physical bodies, “For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee” (2 Corinthians 4:1-5).

We, being so used to thinking of things physically and materially, are often baffled by the idea of a spirit – in theory not limited to physical things – experiencing pain. Pain, which we only know in physical and psychological ways. But we forget that torment is not limited to the physical. Think of the worst emotional times of your life. Did it not feel as though something deeper than just a psychological, chemical reaction was happening? Did it not feel as though your very being was held in the grip of pain? Did you find yourself thinking a physical ailment would be a relief compared to your sorrows, regrets, fears, and anxieties?

Think of this and multiply it by eternity.

As previously mentioned, what makes hell truly hell is the permanent absence of God. And that would truly render any soul in a state of eternal agony.

If there are already people in hell,

why will they be judged again?

Much like the heaven that exists now, the hell that exists now is not the “ultimate version.” Jesus tells the believing thief who was crucified with Him, “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). In the aforementioned story of the rich man and Lazarus, He describes in beautiful terms what happened to Lazarus upon his death: “So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom” (Luke 16:22). This is a "temporary heaven," so to speak, that will be immensely overshadowed by the final residence of those saved by Jesus Christ, that is, New Jerusalem: “I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light. And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it. Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there). And they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it. But there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

“And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him. They shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads. There shall be no night there: They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light. And they shall reign forever and ever” (Revelation 21:22 – 22:1-5).

The afterlife for believers that exists now is no doubt a beautiful place, but it surely pales in comparison to the one where all believers will ultimately live forever. This New Jerusalem comes after the Judgment at the Great White Throne.

But those souls for whom a true Christian should weep are likewise in a temporary place: a horrible form of torment indeed, but their current place of agony will be outdone by the “lake of fire,” the ultimate and everlasting punishment, as mentioned earlier. This fate too comes after the Great White Throne.

It must be stressed that the “temporary hell” is not purgatory. The false doctrines of purgatory and other similar ideas imply that these lost souls can be refined or purified after death, or prayed for and saved after death, and that their spiritual state is more of intermediacy than agony. However, there is absolutely nothing in Scripture to suggest such a state after death for the atheist, agnostic, or unrepentant sinner. Death is permanent, as are one's choices and beliefs they held at the time their soul departed. These cannot be atoned for in the afterlife. One must accept Christ while they live on Earth.

What happens between death and final Judgment?

The notion of purgatory brings us to a question often asked and debated among Christians and non-believers alike: when we die, are we in a state of “spiritual sleep,” a kind of unconsciousness in which our souls are reserved for the Day of Judgment? Or are we, as described, sent to bliss or banishment?

Ecclesiastes 12:7, after describing the difficult final days of a human being and their approaching death, states, “the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.” Paul, as we have already seen, refers to the dead who lived in Christ as being “asleep.” Chapter 12 of the book of the prophet Daniel tells us, while describing an end and a rising of the dead, uses similar language: “many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting contempt.”

These verses certainly suggest that bliss or damnation are not found immediately after death, but rather that the soul is kept in a sort of rest or reserve until Judgment. Other verses however, support the notion that one's soul tastes their ultimate eternal fate right away. Jesus' account of Lazarus and the rich man, which the author has already asserted to be a true story and not a parable, describes a complete consciousness and torment while those who still live on Earth continue to do so - the rich man mentions his brothers who have not yet died.

This debate could go on for days between two Christians, or between a Christian and a non-believer, but debating and arguing never led a soul to Jesus. Whichever scenario is correct, the bottom line is made clear by Scripture: there is an eternal paradise and an eternal damnation that exist for the believer and the non-believer respectively. Whether the soul is taken to the bosom of Abraham or to the bosom of fire as soon as its body ceases to live, both are permanent, one is amazing, the other is abhorrent.

What this author believes on the debate is clear, but there are things in Scripture that even a believer cannot be absolutely dogmatic about. However, this does not apply to issues of salvation – that God's Word is inerrant and Divinely Authored, and that repentance from sin and acceptance of His Son Jesus is the only way to eternal life. Christians can disagree on non-salvational points in Scripture without having to accuse one another of heresy: “is the soul conscious after death?”, “did Jesus die only for 'the elect'?” “is the 'behemoth' described in Job an elephant or a dinosaur?” These are not core issues of the doctrine of Christ.

Is the soul simply destroyed in hell?

The Scripturally unsound “annihilationist” view of hell contends that, after a punishment equal to one’s degree of wickedness, the soul simply “dies” and ceases to exist, or that the afterlife for unbelievers is simply the annihilation of the soul. Proponents of this view will note that the lake of fire described in Revelation is referred to as “the second death,” or will twist the meaning of Romans 6:23 to make a summary of their view of the contrast of hell and heaven – “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

But what the annihilationist fails to understand is that this verse, with the rest of the fifth and sixth chapters of Romans (and Bible verses must be understood in context, as with any other document), is not telling us a life lived in unrepentant sin leads to merely the end of one’s soul after physical death. It is actually describing the result of sin on Earth; that the reason death reigns in our world is because of the transgression of Adam and Eve (Romans 5:12-21). These passages tell us that sin and death go hand in hand; it was a result of sin in the Garden of Eden that death came into the world – “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” This did not mean Adam and Even would instantly drop dead, but rather that they would surely become subject to decay and death, contrary to the life God had given them in His Garden.

But as Romans 6:23 tells us, it was as a result of sin that Christ died to atone for our wrongs, to offer us the free gift of everlasting life.

The death described in this verse does not refer to a simple snuffing out of the soul. Jesus Himself refers to eternity for the unrepentant as “everlasting punishment” (Matthew 25:46).

In fairness, I would be remiss if I didn't mention Jesus' words in Matthew 10:28. Though I don't believe it describes the soul's end, the text is as follows (NKJV) - "do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."

Are there “levels” of hell?

Concerning a question many people ask, “is hell the same for everyone who goes there?”, I’d have to say no. There are different rewards in heaven, and I believe there are different degrees, so to speak, of hell. Jesus tells the village of Capernaum, because of their unbelief even after the miracles He performed, that it will be “more tolerable” for Sodom and Gomorrah than for Capernaum on the Day of Judgment.

I don’t believe the average agnostic or atheist will experience the same kind of torment as people like Nero or Stalin. Some people, like Osama bin Laden or Hitler, might find themselves cast into a much more agonizing form of eternal damnation.

This is another non-salvational issue that does not affect the doctrine of Christ or His Scripture. I could very well be wrong about different “degrees” of suffering in hell.

But, again, the bottom line is that hell is eternal, unbearable anguish for anyone who goes there, be they the passive one who never found time or reason to repent, or the tyrant who suppressed the name of Jesus and killed their own citizens. And the reason, again, is the absence of God and His rich mercy.

Is Satan in charge of hell?

No. Satan will be cast into the lake of fire and be subject to eternal torment: “The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Revelation 20:10).

He will not reign in hell. The Bible says that Satan's dominion is actually our world. Paul mentions the devil's spiritual activity in this world: “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience...” (Ephesians 2:1-2). “The prince of the power of the air” refers to Satan and his demonic influence and battles against those in Christ.

Paul also calls Satan “the god of this age” (2 Corinthians 4:4). John says, “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one” (1 John 5:19).

Addressing the church in Pergamos, Jesus refers to the evil spiritual dominion Satan has established: “I know your works, and where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is. And you hold fast to My name, and did not deny My faith even in the days in which Antipas was My faithful martyr, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells” (Revelation 2:13).

It must be remembered that God is not the “good God” and Satan “the bad god.” Satan is a created being, and is subject to the will of God, who is sovereign. The devil can only go so far as God allows, and is only given what God allows. See the beginning chapters of the story of Job for an example.

Did Jesus mention hell?

Jesus talks about hell more than other figure in the Bible. A term often translated “hell” when spoken by Jesus in the New Testament is “Gehenna.” Gehenna was once the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, and became a synonym for abomination and wickedness. It was there that two of Judah’s most wicked kings, Ahaz and Manasseh, sacrificed their children to the false god Molech. Gehenna became a place for burning refuse, a landfill, and in Jewish apocalyptic literature, a synonym for hell itself. In the ninth chapter of Mark’s account, Jesus, speaking to Jews who would be familiar with the connotation of the name of the valley, says that the fire of hell (“Gehenna”) “shall never be quenched.” Also in this chapter, Jesus quotes from Isaiah 66:24, describing a worm that does not die, and a fire that is not quenched.

Jesus also describes eternal torment in His condemnation of those who proclaimed Him but did not love Him: “And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matthew 25:46).

Perhaps most stirringly, He says in John 5:28-29: "for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation."

How should a Christian feel about hell?

Unrelenting sorrow. Not delight or glee at the thought of anyone spending their eternity there. To get to hell, one must deny and never know Jesus. And why would a Christian want that for anyone?

How should a Christian tell others about hell?

They shouldn't. A Christian's focus should be sharing the good news – that is, the Gospel – of Jesus Christ. Our focus should not be the damnation that awaits those who reject this Gospel. Undoubtedly, in conversations about Jesus and the Bible, the subject of hell can arise, and a Christian should not be hesitant to be honest about the reality of hell. But no one will listen to those who only rave about fire and brimstone.

The center of Christian evangelism must be centered on Jesus and the light and life He offers, both on Earth and in eternity.

"Conscience: Judas" by Nikolai Ge

Poem: "Damsels in Distress"

 In days of long ago

Villains would steal women – 

damsels in distress, we called them – 

and tie them to the railroad tracks

A man with a chiseled chin

and a blonde pompadour,

and sometimes a cape,

would come to her rescue 

Untying her bonds just in time

Before the Cannonball Express 

roared down the tracks 

to tear her to shreds

Those damsels in distress 

must have been the greatest of 

lilies among thorns

for those Michelangelo men to risk

their painstakingly crafted chins

They must have been something special, 

those damsels,

Like sirens singing the sweet ballads of Venus

for the thirsty hammer toting heroes of Mars

I’ve never loosed a woman from the railroad tracks 

I dropped out of the Boy Scouts 

before I could learn about knots

(Some say they learned far too much about tying ropes)

I was never good with pocket knives – 

my hands become weak and shaky 

under pressure 

(Some say the Boy Scouts studied knives far too intensely)

I suspect it doesn’t matter anyhow,

My saving powers

Those damsels in distress wouldn’t want me

to untie them anyway

I’m the henchman of the villain who put them there

The bad guy’s apprentice who found the 

Cannonball schedule 

and studied the thesaurus 

so the boss could sneer his strangely worded taunts

I don’t know them, those damsels 

I never knew how to know them

I could never rescue them from their bonds 

I’m a poor man’s Joker 

An imitation Green Goblin 

I suspect no self-respecting damsel in distress 

needs a stand-in Superman 

with a guilty conscience 

to fumble with knots and babble Robin Hood’s proverbs

I suspect they’d rather hear the coming of the train 

I suspect they’d rather untie themselves 

Jesus Dreams of Egypt

 A strange thought occurred to me. 

About when You were in Egypt. When Joseph and Mary took You and fled to Egypt because of Herod and the massacre of the innocents. When You were there, on Earth, in the flesh, in the form of a small Child, in Egypt - what did You think about?

I mean, there You were, a helpless Child in the place You once...just, ravaged with plagues and death. More than once, actually. Egypt felt Your wrath many times. Maybe not always in the form of frogs and hailstones, but always in death. But that first time, the big one, the time everybody remembers, when You slew the firstborn of Egypt...and now, there You were, kept safe, harbored like a fugitive, by the people You terrorized.

It made me think about myself. We're like that here. You know that. I thought of You as a Child, stirring on a bed of straw or something, dreaming...did You ever dream of Egypt? Did You ever dream of when You turned the river to blood? 

Did You think about it when You were wide awake? Maybe when You were playing in a field or something. Maybe You saw some place, some barren little patch, and remembered some Egyptian child You struck down on that spot a thousand years before?

I thought about myself, like I said. And how You have the divine right, the sovereignty, to absolutely obliterate me if You saw fit. Just like You had the right to drown Pharaoh's army. Just like You had the right to slay the firstborn. You give power and You take it away, and You had the right to send the Persians and anybody else You saw fit to conquer Egypt. 

And there You were, snug and secure, safe from that madman Herod, safe in Egypt. Of all places. Knowing You'd broken them in pieces so many times. Knowing someday somebody might say You were the madman.

I think of Your right to destroy. I think of Your right to destroy me. Not just my body, but to send me to hell. I know they say I'm not supposed to say that, that You send people to hell. They tell me I'm supposed to say, "people send themselves to hell when  they choose to reject Jesus." And I get it, but it just makes it sound like I'm apologizing for You. Like I'm apologizing for the whole idea of hell. But I just can't bring myself to believe You're wrong. There are plenty of people long dead who it would make me very upset to know they're not in hell right now. 

So I don't apologize for You. And if You're not wrong, then You wouldn't be wrong to harden my heart and abandon me to evil. To just stop giving me strength, to cut off all Your help. 

The Calvinists like to talk about it a lot. About how You "predestine" some people for hell. Like they don't ever have a chance. I don't think I agree. But I know You'd have the sovereign right to do such a thing. 

I'd dread telling the Calvinists I think they're right. Knowing how they are, they'd probably tell me, "yeah we already know."

A guy told me once that when You drowned Pharaoh's army, the angels rejoiced, but You rebuked them. You told the angels that the Israelites could rejoice, because the Egyptians had tried to destroy them, but that You, You didn't want to rejoice over drowning the army - they were people You'd created, people You'd given life. And You mourned having to destroy them. 

Is that true? Or is it just some extra-Biblical thing, like a fable? I like to think it's true. After all it, it does fit You. You mourned a lot. You mourned on the mountains by Yourself, You mourned when they killed John the Baptist, You mourned when Lazarus was dead. 

And You mourned on the cross. Talk about sovereign choices. You chose to suffer and die for me. For everybody, even for Egypt. 

Did You weep while You slept on Your bed of straw? Did You dream of how many Egyptians You'd destroyed, and it knotted up Your guts, Your very human guts, to dream of those slain firstborn? Did You mourn when You woke up from the dreams, knowing what You'd do when You were grown up, knowing what they'd do to You on that cross, knowing it was the only way You'd never have to brutalize anybody again?

Unless, like I said, You send them to hell for rejecting You. In Egypt, did You dream about everybody, Egyptian, Jew, Gentile, that someday You'd destroy in hell? Did You dream of someone somewhere two thousand years later, screaming at the sky that You don't have any right? 

What did You dream? I wonder. But I know I don't really want to know. 

I'd go mad if I knew the things You had to bear in Your dreams.

Poem/Prose: "A Sight To Behold"

Yesterday was Christmas, and the king was in one of his moods. He lashed out and struck the archbishop on the head. The archbishop smiled to himself as he escaped through the corridor. He took it in stride, because it happens every day.

The king then took to the balcony to declare, for the fifth time this month, that he vowed to cut off the heads of all the court jesters; he claimed the jingling of the bells on their shoes were codes sent to the ambassador of Spain. He raved from his balcony for hours on end, as kings do when they go mad in old age.

Something happened in the Low Countries yesterday. A handful of peasants are weeping for Rachel and her children, for they are no more. 

What happened must be truly unspeakable - the king's decree is all anyone is talking about today, though they've heard it so many times before. 

They take Rachel and her children in stride, because it happens every day. But the king is fat, a jester himself in diamonds, as kings become when they go mad in old age. It's a sight to behold.

MLK Had a Dream - Not a Magic Spell

Each time an act of racial injustice or controversy erupts in America, a certain type of people will look at the chaos and fury of the protests and claim, "Dr. King would not approve. They should be more like Dr. King."

We often emptily invoke MLK's name in an effort to suggest racism isn't as big a deal as people think. We make him to be the great crusader who quashed racism, that the "I Have a Dream" speech was the magic spell that cured bigotry forever. We tell ourselves these things not out of reverence for Dr. King, but so we don't have to face the fact that racism and oppression are still very real and powerful monsters. We tell ourselves racism in modern America is an invention of the liberal media, or some other such boogeyman, designed to divide us. 

So, when protests turn violent, no matter who's at fault, we use a cliche we've invented that goes: "be like Martin Luther King!" 

Yet we have no idea what we mean by that. If it simply means, "be more peaceful and you'll cure racism," our ignorance is blatant as we forget that King, a peaceful activist himself, met his end in an act of racial violence - proving racism did not end at "Free at last, free at last..."

Poem: "Rebel Scum"

I searched the bars for my friend Billy Yank -

Maggie had been missing for days, and he might

know where to find her if he could only think.

I averted my gaze from the dancers and when 

I saw my blue bellied friend, I went to beg him

for answers. But to my horror, before Billy could

even belch, I saw beside him Jefferson Davis 

himself. 

"Billy Yank, you're in Union blue, in the sight 

of unbelievers! Chumming with a traitor in full 

public view, buying bourbon for the grayest of

Gray deceivers!" 

I dragged Billy to the stall, Jeff Davis not 

seeming to notice me at all; Billy threw up 

on my shoes and I reminded him again of

his sin, and that he wore the Union blue.  

"Captain, calm your fuse" Billy replied, "Old Jeff 

and I are both patrons here. We're just talking 

Predestination; who am I to refuse such sincere 

conversation?"

"He's Rebel scum," I insisted,

"his ears are deaf and dumb to reason -

he's Mississippi's son, unrepentant of his

treason."

"We're both Rebels too, you and me,"

Billy slurred; "we were born in Alabama

amongst that damnable Rebel herd. Our fathers

owned the men we died to set free. The 

only difference is," Billy wiped his bleeding 

mouth, and fell to the floor, "when Cain broke

loose in the South, we were gambling in

Baltimore."

I was indignant; I had no time for rebuke, 

especially by a man I'd once defended, 

now covered in fluid and puke.

"Either you know where Maggie's gone,

or you don't," I said real flat. "I've got to find

her fast." Billy Yank shook his head before 

he breathed his last, and that was that.

At HQ I shook off what Billy said. 

I'm no Rebel, I was born no such

thing; I would much rather be dead and 

swallowed by muck and mud, would

much rather hang, than admit there's 

treason in my blood.

I'll prove it any day  

I'll submit to 23 & Me

and provide my DNA, I told myself;

Then everyone would see I'm more

pure a patriot than Abraham Lincoln himself.

Poem: "True Crime"

"He was a slob. Did you ever see him eat? Starving children could fill their bellies with the food that ended up on his beard and his clothes. Dogs would gather to watch him eat. I've never understood gluttony. But I hate it. I hated that about you. He enjoyed disgusting people - being disgusting, the thrill of offending people and making them uncomfortable. He was despicable. He will not be missed."

-The Razor's Edge (1985)

Truth be told, you were despicable, Uncle Jack

Yet you cannot be replaced

You'll never come home, you'll never come back

The earth will soon forget

the shadows in your face.

I'll not pretend you were cavalier

I'll not pretend you were great

Your life was riddled with chances blown,

you left disgust in your wake

But your life was not your own,

it was not yours to take.

I wish I'd been there with you

in the empty Hotel Barringer

I could have listened to your sordid blues

and convinced you to drop your derringer

You were Jack the Terrible

You were no doubt insane

But you cannot be replaced

Your life was precious all the same.

When your friends drifted away,

ran away,

friends, the only thing a broken man has,

You said life was like prison, like Alcatraz

San Quentin, the Green Mile -

you hated to wake each day

To be born, you said, was to break into jail

To be born, you said, was to sail to Guantanamo Bay

But I insist you should have stayed

We were both decked in orange, locked behind bars

True crime is all the rage these days

You and me, alone and loathsome,

we could have been documentary stars. 

Poem: "To a Friend in Hell"

When you got there, did a one-eyed ferryman give you a tour?
Did he call it the River Styx? Do you breathe air?
I guess that's what keeps it warm. Do they stick you with needles
and make you do tricks?
Me, they just gently cuffed me,
gave me Thorazine and drove me away
in an unmarked car, for my own
protection they said. I pretended
it was a limousine, and the hospital lights
and pity confections were Hollywood
in my head.

But you, when you got there, did you see
anybody we know? Can you see anybody's
face at all? Are you alone in a cell and
pecked at by crows? Do you get
passes on Sunday to purgatory? Do they
make you watch one-woman shows off
Broadway? Is Andrew Jackson there?
Is my uncle Mike?
Do you get treated fair? Did anybody at
the gates feel sorry when they told you
what the routine was like?
Me, I just lost an ear to a wrestler named
Beulah Storm, because I said women are
ladies; you don't say that anymore, or
they make you confess to NPR how sorry
you are and beg them not to take you to
Hades.

Have you met Hitler yet? Do they string you
up for a demon dogs' dinner? I feel stupid
asking, but did you forget? Do you ever
think of me? We were both sinners, remember?
I think about you all the time, and how I
wish you were free. Everybody asks me
how you are, and I lie and say you're on
Cloud Nine. I tell them you were rewarded
for protesting the war with Edwin Starr
and you're playing a harp and feeling fine.

Before they take you to netherworld N.A.
I just want you to know I tried. The doctors
in Hollywood in my head remind me how
I told you not to go away. I'll always wish
we were together like before, on gurneys
side by side, though they say you're not
worth it anymore. Maybe I'll recognize you,
you'll say something strange and slightly off
and I'll be able to tell. Maybe you'll hear
my nasty hacking cough and remember me,
if you ever leave hell.

The Forgotten Murder of Alberta King

Bafflingly, few Americans realize that Alberta King - mother of Martin Luther King, Jr - was shot to death just six years after her son, as she sat her Atlanta church's organ, on June 30, 1974. She was 69 years old. Her killer was Marcus Chenault, a member of an extremist wing of the Black Hebrew Israelites. When I first learned of this event, I was stunned that I hadn't previously known it. Upon reading of this murder, I assumed that the heinous nature of the act, and its high-profile victim, would have seared it into American consciousness as much as the assassination of her son in 1968.

In the wake of the chaos that's erupted (that is, simply re-awoken from its troubled, fitful, one-eyed sleep) in the past two weeks after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, I think I've figured out why the murder of Alberta King is not a more widely known crime, unjustly relegated to an obscure footnote in the history of American race relations.

Every time a high-profile injustice is committed against a Black person, and the unsolved issue of racial oppression again rises in heated debate, violence, or social uprising, there are invariably a vocal number of Americans who dismiss racism as a dying issue. There are countless people who, whether too cowardly, too weak, or too deluded to face such a remaining struggle, have developed the revisionist notion that, with two events, racism in America was forever destroyed. Those two events being:
the Emancipation Proclamation, and the "I Have a Dream" speech.

Any further escalation of tensions or oppression is labeled by these kinds of thinkers as liberal agitation designed by some unseen blue-haired septum-pierced boogeyman out to divide the country. And to prove their point, these people will almost always quote from Martin Luther King's famous speech. They will cherry-pick their favorite lines or exalt the speech as if it were a magic spell Dr. King cast on the country that forever ended racism.

Despite the fact that King was later shot and killed - by a racist.

And it's in the recent inevitable rekindling of these revisions to history that I've realized why the murder of Alberta King is such an obscure event in the grand picture of racism in America.
It's the same reason so many white people often fail to mention her son's murder - simply put, it doesn't fit their narrative. That narrative being that Dr. King crushed all prejudice with his marches and his speeches, therefore there's no need to talk about it anymore, not again, never.

The addition of Alberta King's murder to her son's story is too awkward of a detail, too lengthy and dark of an afterword. The story of Martin Luther King works better, revisionists may reason, if it ends panning away from his lifeless body on that balcony in Memphis to an epitaph of hope, despite his murder. A story is strange when there are too many more events to absorb after the climax. The flow of the story is affected. Maybe the shooting of Alberta King dashes the hope otherwise found in the coda to the life story of her son. It's too painful. It rends the heart. It's a reminder we're too fragile to take, a thought we're too ashamed to consider: that a mother's death at the hands of racial madness would suggest the work for which her son died was left incomplete, despite how amazing his work truly was - a telling sign that even with all that the Civil Rights Movement accomplished, minorities are still blatantly oppressed in the United States.

We've left the murder of Alberta King as a footnote. We might even have the audacity to say, "but she was shot by another Black person, therefore it's not the same kind of racism." But her violent death, like the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, must be remembered as another bloody and horrific day in the history of American race relations. We must unearth this woman's death from the archives to which we've relegated it, and display it as it is - a glaring reminder that racial division and the bloodshed it causes is alive and well, breathing fire, no matter how many MLK quotes we handle with carelessness once every January, twice every February.

Album Review: Rick Wright - "Broken China"

You can take a guy out of Floyd, but you can’t take Floyd out of a guy. Each member of Pink Floyd’s solo albums have brought to the fore that particular musician’s strengths, highlighting his contributions to the legendary catalog of the band’s music, always keeping the identifiable, though ineffable, aura of Floyd that always seemed to overshadow its individual members. Even drummer Nick Mason, the most overshadowed member of Floyd, has released two albums that, though obscured by history, reflect his understated, dry, British sense of humor.

Broken China was keyboardist Rick Wright’s second solo album (his third if you count Identity, a collaboration with Dave Harris), and ultimately his last. After being musically reinvigorated by Pink Floyd’s recent Division Bell album and world tour, Wright couldn’t sit on his yacht and do nothing. He was creatively recharged, and this hauntingly beautiful, atmospheric album was evidence. And, it brought out exactly what Rick Wright’s contribution to Pink Floyd had been – atmosphere. Just as Roger Waters’ solo works displayed his lyrical muscle and political vision, as David Gilmour’s albums showcased what had been the musical force behind Waters’ lyrics, as Syd Barrett’s two albums preserved, both sadly and brilliantly, his mental decline but remaining genius, Broken China is a portrait of Wright’s ability to create an atmosphere for the story being told in Floyd’s songs and albums.

The 1980s had been a very rough time for Wright. He had been silently ousted from Pink Floyd by 1981, and efforts to repair a crumbling marriage fell through. The album with Dave Harris went nowhere, Wright calling it “a mistake,” and perhaps his most high-profile musical project otherwise had been the score to a documentary about soccer star Pele. When former bandmates Gilmour and Mason decided to begin recording again as Pink Floyd, Wright was eventually brought on board. His contributions to A Momentary Lapse of Reason were limited, but his performance in the ensuing two hundred-date world tour and live Delicate Sound of Thunder album demonstrated a musician regaining the self-confidence that had been eroded by the band’s bitter in-fighting in the 70s, and by his own personal struggles.

Wright has since stated that the reason he suffered from severe writer’s block, which coincided with Roger Waters’ grasping of the Floyd controls, is that he was depressed. Little did he know his own experience would be invaluable to identifying with the muse of his finest solo piece. The story being
told on Broken China is a woman’s experience with depression. It’s the most Floydian of any of the band’s solo albums, and not just because it follows a specific theme: it’s more the thought that “you can’t take Floyd out of the guy.” Just as, musically, “Money” had sounded like excess, as “Time” had sounded like desperation, as “The Great Gig in the Sky” had sounded like fear, the sounds of Broken China sound like mental distress, in a purely emotional sense rather than the sociopolitical sense of the Waters era. “Money” and “Time” told their stories so poignantly with instruments that even if they hadn’t included cash register and clock sound effects, they’d have sounded like their subjects.

So it is with this album. One can hear a woman groping in the darkness without the sound of stumbling, footsteps, or weeping. Wright’s music does that. Floyd collaborator Anthony Moore proved a perfect fit for Wright’s music when he supplied lyrics for “Wearing the Inside Out” on The Division Bell – which remain among Pink Floyd’s best post-Waters lyrics. Moore had worked with Floyd on A Momentary Lapse of Reason as well, and continues to do so occasionally into the twenty-first century with Gilmour. His words can be as dark and melancholy, as filled with haunts and madness, as they can be uplifting and hopeful. What Waters’ lyrics had been to a world view, Anthony Moore’s words are to a personal view, to sheer emotion. Rick Wright must have been in the mood to match the emotion of those lyrics, as in two particular cases, he gives two vocal performances more thrilling and chilling than any turn at the mic with Floyd: “Far From the Harbour Wall” is devastating, while the penultimate “Along the Shoreline” finds Wright pouring everything he has into his modest voice, waves of hope cascading to form a powerhouse vocal from a man not remembered for such eye-widening performances.

Softer pieces like “Hidden Fear” and “Blue Room in Venice” tug at one’s heart as Wright’s own vocal cords seemingly break as he sings them. The keyboardist himself was always critical of his own voice – of his own work, period – though Pink Floyd songs like “Stay” and “Summer ‘68” (the latter being the closest the group ever came to sounding like the Beatles), and the opinion and love of fans, belie his reservations. But tough on himself or not, Wright was indeed known more for his musical contributions rather than his singing, and his work here molds an alluringly dark portrait of his subject; instrumentals like “Unfair Ground,” “Satellite,” and the introductory “Breaking Water” are as articulate in telling this broken woman’s story as Anthony Moore’s gripping lyrics. Guest Sinead O’Connor sings lead on two pivotal songs, “Reaching For the Rail” and the closing “Breakthrough,” the latter of which David Gilmour says he wished had been written in time for inclusion on The Division Bell. On some of his early 2000s solo shows, Gilmour would insist on Wright having a spotlight to perform the song.

Rick Wright died of cancer in 2008, crushing what very scant hope remained of a reunion album or tour of the celebrated four-man Floyd. Even if that was unlikely to happen in the first place, it’s still a shame that Wright never completed another solo album. He would, fortunately, form a more intimate partnership with Gilmour than when they were in Floyd together, and he continued to perform – and even sing – until his death. When he passed, even Roger Waters, who had by then made amends with his former bandmates, stated that with all the arguments and debates of “who was Pink Floyd” or who was the most important, Rick Wright’s unique, surreal playing were sometimes overlooked in the fury, and that his contributions cannot be underestimated.

He was as important to the sound of Pink Floyd as the prism on the cover of Dark Side of the Moon was as important to their imagery and lore. Fortunately, we have Broken China as a memento of a talented, complicated musician weaving with his talent a story as sad as the eyes of the man himself.

from the book Rocktology Exam: Classic Rock's Hidden Gems

Poem: While Thinking of Ashley Mattingly & A Mass Shooting in Nova Scotia

You've taught your children how to walk
And how to help little old ladies who can't
You've taught your children about
the Underground Railroad
and the charge at Iwo Jima
Have you taught them
not to rage when they're called crazy
for believing such crazy bravery?

Have you taught them what crazy looks like?
Have you taught them what to say to crazy people?
and how to listen to their stories?
To keep eye contact? How often to nod?
Have you taught them how to talk to the cops
when they go crazy, too?

Have you taught them about Dred Scott?
About Waco and Oklahoma City?
About Casey Anthony and Adolf Hitler?
Have you taught them how to howl
at the tops of their lungs?
Have you taught them ah who cares?
"hAvE yOu TaUgHt YoUr ChIlDrEn?"
Nobody cares

Album Reviews: Neil Young - "Trans" & "Everybody's Rockin'"

My old football coach had a tracheotomy and spoke with one of those microphone things tracheotomy patients use (I don’t know what they’re called). This left his voice sounding electronic and alarming to those who weren’t used to it; you can imagine how disconcerting it was to be rushing down the field and hearing a robotic voice repeating “RUN! RUN! RUN!” It messed with both teams’ heads and it wasn’t unusual that Coach Escobar’s voice affected the score of the game.
Likewise, when fans and the suits at Geffen Records alike heard Trans, they were jarred and confused by what Neil Young was doing (save for the ones who claimed they weren’t).
Rolling Stone, in their typically too-cool-for-the-room language, said of the album:

“‘Well, Mr. Weird is at it again,’ was one of the first reactions I heard to the synthesized sounds and Vocoderized vocals that typify a lot of the material on Neil Young’s new album, Trans. With Young, one learns to expect the unexpected...”

And they were right. After the commercial success of Harvest, the public indeed came to appreciate the unexpected from Young, starting with the hoarse, desperate delirium of Tonight’s the Night in 1975. And, as catty as the “Mr. Weird” remark may have been, the observation was not without merit. But it’s imperative to keep in mind that NY has never ventured into the eclectic, the weird, without purpose. There’s always been a method to the madness. Much like the derelict at the bus station who holds a cardboard sign declaring “The End is Near,” there’s a reason he does this. The derelict is not experimenting or making such a bold statement out of stagnancy, or for the sake of the thrill of being bold. And, surely enough, there’s a meaning, an origin, an inspiration behind the vocoders and other techno gizmos that make up the sound of Trans.

That inspiration was Neil’s son, Ben.

Born with cerebral palsy, Ben is unable to speak. Through advanced therapy sessions with his son, Young was stricken creatively by the thought of being unable to communicate. Obviously, the theme had been on his mind long before, as he’d experienced it firsthand in observing his son’s disability. And, like just about every other human being, he’d no doubt experienced personally the existential frustration of feeling unheard and misunderstood, especially as an artist whose music is so heavily scrutinized and often confounding. Though Trans does include a couple of “conventional” tracks (stemming from its beginning as an unassuming project called Islands in the Sun), the bulk of it, and the most intriguing material, is that in which Young is either misunderstood when his literal voice is distorted by the gadgetry, or when it’s his musical and artistic goals that leave one puzzled. Young paints a stunning portrait of a sterile futuristic (or maybe even current) environment and, most importantly, of a man with a lot to say struggling to communicate.
Rolling Stone summed up their review:

“despite his tinkering around with the hardware of the computer age, Neil Young is really still a sweephand clock in a digital world, a solitary quester after truth. And he continues to tick for all things enduring: love, humanity, dignity, strength. The good fight.”

The artistic accomplishment was the good news. The bad news was, among the people who didn’t get it was David Geffen, head of the eponymous record label with whom Young had recently signed. Geffen was also the most incensed. Funding for a planned film to accompany the album was pulled in retaliation for what the label’s executive deemed “uncommercial and unrepresentative work.” The film, according to Neil Young, would have made the album much more understandable. What’s more galling is that Young’s contract had assured him complete creative control.
David Geffen demanded a rock and roll record. That’s exactly what Neil Young planned to give him.
As Neil Young told it:

“I almost vindictively gave Geffen Everybody’s Rockin’. Geffen wanted more rock ‘n’ roll. That was the key phrase: ‘Well, you want some rock ‘n’ roll, do ya? Okay, fine. I can do that. As a matter of fact, my uncle was a rocker, and I’ll be him.’”

 Everybody’s Rockin’ was likely recorded with the aid of Mr. Peabody and the Way Back Machine. It transported Young and his new backing band, the Shocking Pinks, to the rockabilly days of 1959. Neil and the Pinks were clad in pink and white suits and greasy, overhanging pompadours for the album’s promotional material as they dove into the role of golden age rockers. Trans had been given a pass, at least with the critics. With Everybody’s Rockin,’ however, the reception would not be so open-minded. Partly because a rockabilly record in 1983 was sinful compared to the fact that Young was at least adventuring forward with new technology on Trans.

Much like the planned film that would have accompanied Trans, Young has since said that there were two songs left unrecorded that would have fleshed out the story of Everybody’s Rockin’ and the Shocking Pinks. Perhaps those two tracks would have made what Geffen probably viewed as nostalgic parody a piece of actual storytelling. But, it’s doubtful: David Geffen’s outrage at Young’s new material prompted him to abrogate the recording sessions, leaving fans with a record just twenty-five minutes long.
In any case, whatever story told by those two lost songs is unknown, and it’s a true shame they’re not present, but the very sound of Everybody’s Rockin’ tells a story of its own. Young and his trio are living a dream dreamt by every kid who first strummed a Stratocaster in the Eisenhower era. The foursome relived the Alan Freed scandal and the bebop of a simpler age when a broken heart and 4/4 time was more than enough to make a great song. Though placed in tighter structures than the likes of “Cowgirl in the Sand,” Young manages to pull out some subtly devastating vocal performances, particularly on “Wonderin’” and “Bright Lights, Big City.” The former is especially moving, as much as earlier, more heralded material like “After the Gold Rush.”

If Harvest was the measuring stick by which all of Young’s “weird” albums were compared, no doubt Everybody’s Rockin’ was as unconventional and, admittedly, “unrepresentative” as Trans. But Neil Young wasn’t phased by being called “unrepresentative.” He’s since stated that one of his career’s motifs has been to move on quickly, before an audience can identify or stifle him in any musical box, lest they figure out what defines him.

In a way, Trans and Everybody’s Rockin’ are hard to separate from each other, though they’re musically polar opposites. They both perplexed Young’s audience more than any instance prior, and found him unable to communicate with them. But perhaps more detrimental than that, the subsequent battle between Neil Young and David Geffen is so infamous that the music is often overshadowed by the creative and legal scuffle that accompanied them. But decades later, the point of the records, the things Young was trying to express are much clearer, the music in a position to be appreciated, and their creator justified (and not just because he won the lawsuits and got an apology from Geffen). It’s a bummer that sometimes it takes forty years for a piece of music to be understood, even if just a little, but in a strange way, it compounds what Young was saying behind all those sound effects and greasy pompadours –

we really don’t understand each other, do we?

-from the book Rocktology Exam: Classic Rock's Hidden Gems

Bored With Miracles

To paraphrase, God told Elijah, go and talk smack to the king of Israel, then run and hide yourself at a dreary wilderness near a brook, and I'll command ravens - literal birds that fly - to bring you food every day.
So Elijah did what God commanded. He told the evil King Ahab that a drought would come upon Israel, and it would not end until he said so.

In the meantime, Elijah hid from the wrath of the king near a small brook east of the Jordan. We know that Elijah was there for a while, because we're told that eventually the entire brook dried up as the drought worsened. Unlike most places in the Bible, it's unknown where exactly this place was on a map, but if it looked anything else like the surrounding country, it probably wasn't the most exciting or entertaining places to spend a great deal of time doing...

...well, we don't really know what Elijah did to occupy his time he spent by the brook. If his faithfulness tells us anything, he likely did a lot of praying. And every day, while he was doing a lot of praying, a miracle happened in the morning and at night, when ravens would bring him bread and meat. That was Elijah's daily schedule for a long time in a long drought: pray, eat breakfast provided through Divine miracle, pray some more, eat dinner provided by another Divine miracle, pray again, sleep.

Pray, miracle, pray, miracle, sleep. Pray, miracle, pray, miracle, sleep. Pray miracle, pray, miracle, sleep...

If Elijah was anything like me, and it's evident by Scripture that he was not, he'd have eventually become bored - complacent, even. And I know exactly how I would have felt if I'd been in Elijah's position because I'm in his position every day. So are you. We rise in the morning with a miracle - that miracle being God's providence. The miracle of our Salvation, sealed by Jesus' blood on the Cross. The miracle of His Holy Spirit guiding us and giving us discernment in our prayers, in every day decisions and troubles.

And yet, we often become restless. We get bored, our minds wander, even wander during our prayers. Even if we pray a lot.

Twice a day, Elijah received a mind-boggling, nature-defying miracle. Ravens directed by God Himself brought him bread and meat. And despite such a wondrous thing, if I'd been there, knowing me, eventually, as the brook slowly dried up, I'd have forgotten just how amazing those ravens were, just how amazing the Hand is that brought them. I know this full well because in my fleshly weakness and the sluggishness of my faith, I do exactly the same thing today - all day, every day, I receive a mind-boggling, nature-defying miracle. Every day, I receive the mind-boggling, nature-defying truth that Jesus Christ was slain on a Cross for my miserable sins, yet rose from the dead and, miraculously, invited me to live with Him now and in eternity, washed anew and redeemed.

That was, and is, a far more amazing miracle than being brought food by ravens. And yet, despite being reminded of that miracle, being faced with that miracle, I find myself complacent if I'm not careful. I find myself bored.

We must bear in mind that a life lived in God does not become one of intrigue and explosions as one's faith grows. One can have the most sincere and fruitful of faith and still live a life that would to many appear mundane and average. Among the many things the Bible explicitly tells us to expect, we can expect to often have to build our faith and live it in dreary, troublesome days.
But the Bible also tells us to expect those dreary, troublesome days to be opportunities to serve others, to bless them in all sincerity, to share the truth of this miracle you and I wake up to every day, to fill our dreary and troublesome days with the light of the Gospel. Even when those days are as still and dry as a ravine near the Jordan in the midst of a drought.

Later in Elijah's ministry, after fleeing from the wrath of Israel's vengeful monarchs, he found himself in a cave in a mountain called Horeb. God told him to leave the cave and stand on the mountain. Elijah was then surrounded by the ominous noise, debris, and chaos of a great wind, an earthquake, and a fire. "But the LORD was not in the wind... the LORD was not in the earthquake... the LORD was not in the fire." Then, "a still, small voice."

And there in the delicate, whispering voice was God.

God is in the sullen whispers and chirping crickets that fill our day to day lives. Our lives that can often seem boring and repetitive. But those dull - sometimes painfully dull - days and nights are made radiant and solemnly jubilant when we choose to embrace the miracle we remember every day. The miracle that we are saved, loved, and cherished by the same God who made the galaxies and the worlds, the same God who dried up Israel and brought the rain again, the same God who raised His Son Jesus from the dead.

If we embrace this miracle and listen to it in the silence of the day, our complacency turns to contentment, our boredom to peace, our restlessness to determination to make the most of that mind-boggling, nature-defying miracle that is Salvation.

(1 Kings chapter 17-19)

Love is a Battlefield

A brokenhearted friend once told me in his frustration that the feeling of love is merely a chemical process in the brain and the rest of the body. Mere physiology, or some other technical mumbo jumbo. I hoped he didn't truly believe this: 

If love is a mere chemical process, then so is hate, and therefore hate should not be taken any more seriously than love. It could even be excused. And if those things are only medical goings-on, so are empathy, compassion, and the outrage against injustice that causes so many brave people to speak out against it. 

Every stand of bravery would be meaningless.

[James 1:17] 

Album Review: Bob Dylan - "Shot of Love"

Despite being a Christian, I don’t listen to contemporary “worship music.” I find it bland and repetitive. If I don’t believe whoever wrote a pedestrian song was inspired, I can’t be inspired, either. Who knows if Bob Dylan is still a Christian today? Who knows if he truly was back then? After his three “Christian albums,” several songs for the following Infidels sessions were full of Christian, or at least Biblical, imagery: “Foot of Pride” and “Lord, Protect My Child” are well-known outtakes from that 1983 album, while “Man of Peace” actually made the cut; its chorus “sometimes Satan, you know he comes as a man of peace,” echoes a verse from 2 Corinthians: “Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.” The lead track, “Jokerman,” was packed with explicit Old Testament references, even if it seemed to be describing something else entirely. One could even argue that the pro-Israel “Neighborhood Bully” from Infidels was rooted in Dylan’s experience with the Bible, or just his own Jewish heritage, or maybe even both. Biblical imagery, however, would continue to appear in Dylan’s songs long after his faith became ambiguous, and had actually made appearances long before – “All Along the Watchtower” draws some of its words from the Old Testament book of Isaiah, chapter 21 (I’m serious – snoop around).

But as for identifying a reference to Scripture in a Bob Dylan song and laboring over it as a clue to the state of his faith when he wrote it, if any, is probably a fruitless exercise. Even the title of that first “post-Christian” album: Infidels. It could be a clue in itself. Or, it could mean nothing at all, just a little joke. And, before one reads too deeply into the words of “Death is Not the End” in 1988, in which “the bright light of salvation” and “where the spirit never dies” are hoped for, the caveat remains that a song’s narrator is not always reflective of the songwriter’s beliefs.
Whatever the truth is, the man is notorious for self-contradicting interviews that paint a frustratingly baffling portrait of the artist. He once famously said about the media, “I figured you lied to it.” To be fair, though, maybe we fans ought not have the right to be frustrated – it’s, in a way, none of our business what an artist’s personal beliefs are, unless they choose to splay them on record, film, or text. Sometimes it’s even best not to know: I can’t imagine the horror of being a young Billie Eilish and, upon instant stardom at age sixteen, being harangued by media and the public at large demanding to know your stances on abortion, feminism, wealth inequality, immigration, gender identity, and that cake store that refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
These poor kids don’t even know where babies come from yet.

The burden of being a music star from whom many demand their life answers, the terror of being turned into a golden calf, must be unbearable, unless one just naturally enjoys spouting off their opinions. Bob Dylan no doubt felt this heavier than any major artist before or after him, even more than the Beatles. His beliefs, his thoughts, his views were his, though he was labeled a prophet and those views were adopted with force by his audience.

But, not to defend the demands of such rabid and dogmatic fans, relating to a poignant piece of art while not knowing if the one speaking such seemingly personal statements is being genuine, or if it’s just part of an ever-changing series of the artist’s gimmicks, can be frustrating. Even if, again, sometimes it’s none of our business.
Who knows what goes through Bob Dylan’s head anyway?

1981’s Shot of Love is the last, the hardest-rocking, and most accessible of Dylan’s trio of “Born-again” records that began in 1979, all of which were (and still are) widely criticized. I’ve met many non-believers who, despite not having a religious interest, nonetheless appreciate and gravitate toward the book of Job. There are many elements on Shot of Love that reflect that Old Testament figure’s rage and agony. The title track and “The Groom’s Still Waiting At the Altar” are the most musically ferocious things Dylan had done since “Hurricane.” The former finds Dylan decrying the “rape” of the Church and the declaration that “God is dead,” the latter an angry defense of those who “try to be pure at heart, they arrest you for robbery,” blasting those who “mistake your shyness for lewdness, your silence for snobbery.” “The Groom’s Still Waiting” could have easily fit on Highway 61 Revisited – imagine if The Band, or even just Levon Helm or Garth Hudson, had been in the lineup. “Property of Jesus” is exactly what the title suggests, except it’s much more rollicking and loose than any of the more stiff, underwhelming material on the previous Slow Train Coming and Saved. Its lyrics are moving and stark, the opposite of the kind of Christian music that simply doesn’t move me.

But it’s the gentler moments of this otherwise hard rocking album that are most effective, and find Dylan at his most self- reflective, and self-aware. On the gorgeous harmonica-laden ballad “In the Summertime,” he asks, seemingly his audience and his critics, and maybe himself,
Did you respect me for what I did
Or for what I didn’t do
Or for keeping it hid?
Did I lose my mind
when I tried to get rid
of everything you see?

A passage from the 139th Psalm declares, “where can I go from Your presence? If I ascend into the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.” It seems that way of thinking, that nothing is truly “secular,” as no song can hide from God, is being applied on songs that aren’t overtly “Christian,” like the genial “Heart of Mine” and the beautiful dirge “Lenny Bruce.” Other artists must have felt these tracks safe enough, as “Heart of Mine” features Ron Wood and Ringo Starr, and the Heartbreakers’ Benmont Tench plays keyboards throughout the album. On that note, it’s amazing to think that Slow Train Coming was produced by Jerry Wexler, who, when Dylan allegedly tried sharing his faith during the sessions, sighed and said, “Bob, you’re dealing with a sixty-two-year-old confirmed Jewish atheist. I’m hopeless. Let’s just make an album.” He proceeded to produce Bob to his first Grammy for “Gotta Serve Somebody,” a song John Lennon dubbed so offensively preachy that he responded with “Serve Yourself.”

Then there’s the ode to Lenny Bruce (1925-1966), the most controversial comedian of his time, and to many a martyr for the First Amendment. On almost any other Dylan album, the eulogy would settle inconspicuously in the track list, as Bruce was almost as much of an icon of 60s counterculture as Dylan and Abbie Hoffman. But when placed on an album identified as a Christian album, its inclusion is curious – at first. The lament is actually very fitting among the title track’s anguish and the bite of “Groom.” “Lenny Bruce” captures a sadness that comes from events in the “secular world” (wherever that is) processed through a faith that is mutually inclusive with inevitable feelings of heartbreak. The closing lyric
Lenny Bruce was bad
He was the brother that you never had
gives the listener a look through watery eyes at loss and waste, of a man dead too soon, even if that man was never the singer’s Christian “brother.”

If Dylan was aware his Christian era was, at least musically, coming to a close, there was no better song that could have rolled over the credits or a closing montage of savagely derisive press clippings than “Every Grain of Sand.” It ranks among “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” “Buckets of Tears,” and “Roll On John” as one of the greatest closing tracks to a Dylan album. Even if he has truly eschewed his faith in Christ since the early 80s, he wrote a realistic and heart-wrenching look at the whole idea of faith that’s topped only by King David’s most anguished but hopeful Psalms. Again, being so emotionally gritty, it’s not the kind of contemporary music played in many churches. An even more stunning, rougher early version of the song is available on The Bootleg Series, Vol. 3. “Every Grain of Sand” encapsulates “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (that’s a Bible verse).

I guess you’d just have to have experienced for yourself the beautiful insanity of faith to identify with the poetry in this song. Or, maybe you just have to be someone with a lot of hope, whose hope wrestles daily with a lot of pain. As Dostoevsky once wrote, “my Hosanna has passed through a furnace of doubt.”

-from the book Rocktology Exam: Classic Rock's Hidden Gems