Today I viewed a movie that included this Johnny Cash song at the end:
As I heard this song I heard Johnny’s broken heart as well as the broken hearts of many people in the world, some whom I know closely. Some are very dear to me personally. Some I care for dearly, even though barely knowing them. Yet their pain is steeped into my memory and beyond, even into my heart and soul.
This song, especially the final stanza, made me think of the sad theft that has occurred in most of what is today called Christianity.
The full lyrics are listed at Lyrics.
Here is the last stanza:
If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way
These words very powerfully resonate with the false doctrine of most of what is considered to be Christianity today. These words reflect the image of humanity lost in self-reliance, knowing nothing of God’s pure grace. Most Christians confess this very same empty doctrine of works righteousness. Sinful man cannot keep himself. Sinful man is blinded to the way so that he seeks where he may, but never finds the way that he seeks.
I have watched those I love allow to be brushed from their sacred heads their everlasting crowns of life, to be exchanged for flowery temporal wreaths placed upon their whitewashed tombs, tabernacles of clay. Those who once rested securely in the promises of their baptism now seek to find their own way, calling their own decisions and their own efforts at godliness the way of the Lord. Those who once humbly confessed the faith of Jesus have turned to boasting of their own faith in Jesus. Those who once longed for the blessed Communion of the body and blood of the Lord now trust in the fellowship of coffee and donuts. Once they professed the creeds, but now they promote tolerance of mixed confessions. Where they formerly united in the historic liturgy and rich proclamation of the ancient hymnody, they now divide themselves into multiple worship services of diverse style and focus, even bragging of the blended nature of their contemporaneity with the world. Their own personal witness has been elevated in superiority over the doctrine and practice of the apostles.
“Judge not lest ye be judged,” and “I cannot judge another person’s heart,” has become the mantra by which all who profess the holy catholic Church are judged and condemned as “unloving” and “intolerant.”
Yes, this song by the Man in Black is a very sad song.
Sadder still is the song of those who reduce the Gospel to a nondescript guideline of how personal faith in Jesus and seeking to live a good life, or at least a better life and treating others with some level of respect, is how Christianity and the Church is rightly defined. This song is far sadder even than Johnny’s, for Johnny at least realized that his way was not the right way.
Johnny Cash - Hurt
Hurt (3:37)
1 comment:
Paul,
As you correctly note in your comments flowing from Johnny's song, 'I hurt myself today,' "These words reflect the image of humanity lost in self-reliance, knowing nothing of God’s pure grace. Most Christians confess this very same empty doctrine of works righteousness. Sinful man cannot keep himself. Sinful man is blinded to the way so that he seeks where he may, but never finds the way that he seeks."
YHWH, the Triune God who alone is secure and from whom alone, in Christ the Savior, can any mortal find genuine security, communicates that security to the insecure (both those who are blind and who blind themselves in their futile quest):
Isaiah 41:17 "The poor and needy search for water, but there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst. But I the LORD will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.
Psalm 94:14 For the LORD will not reject his people; he will never forsake his inheritance.
Psalm 37:28, For the LORD loves the just and will not forsake his faithful ones. They will be protected forever, but the offspring of the wicked will be cut off.
Isaiah 42:16 I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.
Jesus', whose merit as it is credited by faith to forsaken sinners by God's Spirit, is why such enlightening promises as noted above, do in truth, shine on our inner darkness with divine light and result in individuals who are changed by such words, not because they make them their reality, but because they lead the pentitent sinner across the deadly void of emptiness into the grace filled life that is eternal, even now.
Gary Cepek
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