In this song, “(We’re Not) The Jet Set,” Jones and Wynette poke fun at their own “redneck” identity. Their stories involve not elaborate vacations through Europe, but small southern towns, little cafes and fountains in what would be considered by many to be the middle of nowhere. They may not have the picturesque romantic backdrop, but, they insist, “ain’t we got love.”

As Jones and Wynette sing about how they “aren’t the Jet Set,” the ideal, wealthy couple, they insist that their love, while more common, is just as real. In this episode, we’ll think about how this intersects with a Christian understanding of happiness and contentment, how Jesus identifies himself with what the world considers often marginal or provincial, and how the gospel goes forward, to Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth—to Rome, Georgia; Athens, Texas; and Paris, Tennessee.

I chose this week’s song when I read Roseanne Cash mention how out of kilter it is in today’s music culture to hear the kinds of songs one heard all the time in Appalachian folk music: songs about the sickness and death of infants and children.

Right after that I read a fascinating article in Slate magazine about the loss of songs about disease in American culture. We once had songs about influenza and polio, but  we are as vaccinated now against such songs as we are against those diseases.

On this week’s episode of “The Cross and the Jukebox,” we listen to an old song in this genre, recorded by Cash, and I ponder what the threat of losing a child to an unstoppable illness can teach us, all of us, about seeking the kingdom.

In this special Good Friday episode of “The Cross and the Jukebox,” we look at one crucial aspect of our Lord’s suffering: the isolation and loneliness he bore from Gethsemane to the grave. As we listen to George Jones’ singing about the cup of loneliness, we’ll ponder why Jesus uses the language of “cup” when speaking of the cross, and about what that has to do with the crosses Jesus promises us we’ll all have to carry between here and resurrection day.

This episode originally aired on April 20, 2011. ]]> http://www.russellmoore.com/2012/04/06/cup-of-loneliness-by-george-jones-2/feed/ Russell D. Moore In this special Good Friday episode of “The Cross and the Jukebox,” we look at one crucial aspect of our Lord’s suffering: the isolation and loneliness he bore from Gethsemane to the grave. As we listen to George Jones’ singing about the cup of loneliness, we’ll ponder why Jesus uses the language of “cup” when [...] 00:22:24 Blog,The Cross and the Jukebox,Audio noRussell Moore on Roots, Music, and Religionhttp://www.russellmoore.com/2012/04/06/cup-of-loneliness-by-george-jones-2/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MooreToThePointTheCrossAndTheJukebox/~3/emA72AN7e-M/ http://www.russellmoore.com/2012/03/30/sweet-home-alabama-by-lynyrd-skynrd/#comments Fri, 30 Mar 2012 12:00:04 +0000 Russell D. Moore http://www.russellmoore.com/?p=8630 This week on “The Cross and the Jukebox” we’ll take a look at song that some have called “the anthem of the South.” For many who were born and raised in the state of Alabama, or the South itself, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” evokes a love of home. But there’s much more to this song than regional pride.

In this episode, we’ll take a look at what this song is reacting against and what it’s speaking to, and we’ll see how the conflicted sense of guilt reflected in the lyrics can only be made sense of within a Christian worldview. We’ll see how this song echoes something that is true about a Christian longing for a homeland, alongside a recognition that we are at the same time sojourners in a strange land.

This song tells the story of a man who was looking to escape the same old routine, and in the process, gets involved with, and then addicted to, drugs. At the end of at all, though, as he looks back on the carnage of a lost home, lost marriage, lost life, he concludes “the high cost of living ain’t nothing like the cost of living high.”

As we think about this song, we’ll reflect on how it intersects with what the Scripture teaches about sin and judgment. This song has much to teach us about how sin leads to despair, about the difference between regret and repentance, and how we ought to preach and proclaim the gospel, pleading with sinners—just like the one in this song smoking pot in the Southern Baptist parking lot—pleading with him to embrace the gospel of Christ, a gospel that extends mercy that triumphs over judgment.

This song, about a Hollywood celebrity stopping into a small-town country service station, is farcical on one level. As Kurt the mechanic speaks to this movie star he refers to himself as famous—because he “caught the record small town bass out on Kentucky lake” and “threw the winning touchdown pass the night that we won state.” As he does, you realize we’re talking about two completely different levels of fame.

But this song, on another level, is very believable, and very serious. You really can be famous not only on a global scale, but also on a very narrow, local scale as well. And you can spend your life in a quest for fame and glory, whether it’s the fame of Hollywood or the fame of Dollywood.

On this week’s episode of “The Cross and the Jukebox,” then, we’ll talk about the ever-present pull towards fame and glory, and how God is upending all of that in Christ. We’ll see how fame—whether local or global—ultimately doesn’t last, and how the name of Jesus will live on forever.

At first, this sounds like simple defiance. But I wonder if many Christians don’t have a similar dread of heaven, imaging it to be an essentially lonely and even boring place, some combination of a family reunion and a spiritual choir practice, that goes on and on… and on and on and on, for all eternity.

If that were what heaven were about, I might be with Bocephus. But it’s not, and I’m not.

Instead, the New Testament paints a completely different picture of the life to come—one of life, of labor, of relationship, of culture, and all this freed from the pangs of sin and death.

Join us in this episode, then, where we’ll talk about the gospel’s call away from carnality, about an age to come where God will bring everything good about this life to fulfillment and perfection in Christ, and about how what we experience in Christ is not an afterlife, but life, in abundance.

At a tactical level, this makes sense. You can’t stop and grieve in the midst of battle or else you’ll end up killed too. But at another level, you can’t just drive on. You can’t just sear over the pain.

More than that, though, in this episode of “The Cross and the Jukebox” we’ll talk about how this same mentality can crop up in Christian ministry or parenting, when we see those we love wrecking their lives or falling into apostasy or immorality. We’ll see how there’s a pull toward a callousness. This callousness tells us to drive on, that it “don’t mean a thing.”

The Gospel, though, tells us it does mean a thing. And in this episode we’ll think about what it means to be a Christian in the midst of warfare.

For so many of us the line from the Garth Brooks song rings true: “Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.”

So many of us can now see how the blessings God chose to give us could not have come were he to have given us what we wanted back then. In this week’s episode of “The Cross and the Jukebox,” we’ll be looking at a newer song by a man named Eric Church called “What I Almost Was.” In this song, Church looks back on the life he had, the life he could have had, and thanks God he didn’t become who he “almost was.”

As we listen to this song about what almost was, we’ll talk about the way it points us to God’s wisdom, and his kindness and providence, and how God often spares us from what could have been if we had received what we wanted.

When Williams insists, “your cheatin’ heart will tell on you” he says something very true about the conscience that God has placed inside every human being.

Part of the fabric that God has designed to point men and women to the gospel is this conscience, which testifies to the individual what they know to be true about God, about sin, about judgment and obedience. And while this conscience is individual, on the Last Day this same conscience will bear witness to every human being’s deeds in the flesh. If you have a conscience, one day at judgment your heart “will tell on you.”

In terms of this song, Hank Williams may not be right in the short term. The cheatin’ heart of the woman he loved may not tell on her in this life. But ultimately, her heart will tell on her, and so will yours. So in this week’s episode we’ll talk about this conscience, and how Jesus answers the accusing heart.

In addition, this will be the last broadcast of “The Cross and the Jukebox” of 2011. But we will be back in early January with more conversation about roots, music, and religion.

The song “If We Make It through December” is a sad reflection on that reality, written from the perspective of a father worried about his standing as provider at Christmastime. I think “If We Make It through December” actually has more to do with the Christmas stories of people in our communities and in our churches than, say, “Jingle Bells” does. I also think it has more to do with the Christmas Story too. Joseph of Nazareth faced the same gut-wrenching crisis that the man in Haggard’s does. In adopting Jesus and marrying Jesus’ Blessed Mother, Joseph plunged himself into economic peril. In this episode of the Cross and the Jukebox, we’ll look at what this means for us and for the families to whom we hope to be the presence of Christ.

Haggard has since repudiated the central message of this song, but I don’t think this song relates merely to the events of the 1960s, about what was going on in America at that time. Instead, I think “Okie from Muskogee” can teach us about our so-called “culture wars,” and what it means to have a kind of pride born of a “persecution complex”—but not the kind of persecution that comes along with believing in the gospel.

Often the people against whom we protest aren’t those who really threaten us at all. Often the people against whom we rage are the ones for whom we are to have pity. A kind of “Okie from Muskogee” mentality, in the end, is not far from any one of us. But the gospel calls us to something else altogether.

Dylan, Thornbury says, “does a very good job listening in to where a society or a culture is, and standing alongside of it without representing any one political perspective.” Together we talk about how “The Times They Are a-Changin’” has something of a somber tone, a tone of judgment. We discuss how youth culture revolts against the status quo of the previous generation.

And Thornbury also gives his rationale as to why fans of “classic country music” should listen to Bob Dylan—who, I should add, was a good friend of Johnny Cash.

But the questions that Clapton asks in his song are not only related to children who have died. “Would you know my name if I saw you in heaven?” is a question about which many people wonder—believers and unbelievers alike.

I think it’s a shame that the teaching in our churches has been so deficient that we have a kind of isolated, staring-into-a-bright-light concept of heaven. The Scriptures present something different, something better. The new creation, the Bible tells us, is exactly that—a creation, with relationships, with service, with love, a kind of resumption of the present, and all with King Jesus at the center.

The gospel is able to take even weak and momentary connections and make them mature, and ongoing, in kingdom come. And there will be no tears there (Rev. 21:4). In the meantime, our lives will be characterized by suffering, and weeping. And that ought to drive us to compassion, and love.

On this week’s episode of “The Cross and the Jukebox,” I argue that the central thrust of this song is the question of friendship. Friendship is an easy, ephemeral thing in contemporary American culture, in which “friends” are often made by clicking an icon. This song, though, shows both the risks and the glories of what it means to be friends.

We take a look at that glory and that tragedy in this week’s episode of “The Cross and the Jukebox.”

But the way of Jesus doesn’t look wise to the world. That’s paradox, and that’s mystery. And it’s the gospel.

In today’s episode of “The Cross and the Jukebox” I talk with my favorite singer-songwriter, Michael Card, about his song, “God’s Own Fool.” It’s a song that stays with me all the time, because it’s a song that indicts me in a lot of ways. It’s a song that’s changed me, and is constantly changing me; it’s a song that helped crucify my rationalism.

It’s true, as Mike sings: “The power of paradox opens your eyes, and blinds those who say they can see.”

Their song is about vigilante justice, about a desire to see wrongs righted. Days after we’ve commemorated the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I think it’s worth our stopping to think together: why is that we—even those who don’t know Christ—desire justice? Why is it that even those who’ve never heard the gospel preached possess some standard of right and wrong?

And why is it that we, when we are wronged, want to lash out and seek some form of vengeance—if only the kind of vengeance that keeps in mind a record of wrongs? And why is it that we, when wrongs are righted, want to celebrate and rejoice?

In this week’s episode of “The Cross and the Jukebox,” we address such questions—and how Jesus answers them all.

And, man, is it dangerous.

In this week’s episode (below) of “The Cross and the Jukebox,” we take a look at another song by Johnny Cash, “A Boy Named Sue.” This is a lighter song of Cash’s—certainly not on the level of a song we examined last week, “Hurt”—but I don’t think the issue in the song is merely of a father’s naming his son “Sue” in order that he might grow up to be “tough” and “mean.” The key matter isn’t just the name. It’s that the father left. The son had to prove himself a man, without a father there to affirm that manhood.

This song, I think, ought to prompt a question about what it means to affirm a holistic masculinity, in which manhood is defined in terms of Jesus Christ, and not the other way around. Listen in, and join the conversation.

Even those who know next to nothing about Johnny Cash may still know him as “The Man in Black.” Cash sings: “I’d love to wear a rainbow every day / And tell the world that everything’s OK / But I’ll try to carry off a little darkness on my back / ‘Till things are brighter, I’m the Man In Black.”

In some of his other songs, as well, Cash sings about this dark side of life, of the vacuity of human existence. Perhaps this honesty is what has made him stand out to a youth culture that is nervously aware of death, a growing cadre of kids out there who are frankly bored by Lady Gaga’s latest attempt to shock American sensibilities. What they are shocked by instead is this gravelly-voiced man, telling them, from beyond the grave, what they already suspect—the shallow kingdoms of this age are headed for a stunning collapse.

Particularly relevant to these youth is Cash’s rendition of the song “Hurt,” which was written and originally performed by the band Nine Inch Nails. Cash’s haunting music video for the song features faded film shots of his youthful glory days—complete with the images of friends and colleagues, once at the height of their fame, who are now dead. As the camera pans Cash’s wizened, wrinkled face, he sings about the awful reality of death and the vanity of fame: “What have I become? My sweetest friend / Everyone I know goes away in the end / You could have it all / My empire of dirt / I will let you down, I will make you hurt.”

Whereas, the Nine Inch Nails delivered “Hurt” as straight nihilism, Cash gives it a twist—ending the video with the scenes of crucifixion, which, for Cash, was (and still is) the only answer to the inevitability of suffering and pain.

The video of “Hurt” communicated exactly what the dying Cash seemed to understand, echoing Solomon of old: wealth, celebrity, fame, all of it is vanity in the maw of the grave. By contrasting images of the young celebrated Cash with images of the old, gasping, arthritic Cash, his “House of Cash” closed down and boarded over, the video turned then to what Cash saw as the only real alternative to his empire of dirt: the cross of Christ Jesus.

But when I listened to the CD I thought the most interesting aspect of the Dixie Chicks’ music, that album no less than those in the past, had nothing to do with politics. Listening to the lyrics of these young women, one can hear something sad and pitiful and spiritually searching: an intense longing for home.

In this week’s episode of “The Cross and the Jukebox,” we take a look at the Dixie Chicks’ song, “Long Time Gone,” a song in which the group sings about what it meant to run away to Nashville to find success and fame. In this song, there’s a wistfulness for the land they left. But, as we talk about in the podcast, they’re not alone in that wistfulness.

I wonder if the gospel seems so irrelevant to contemporary Americans precisely because so many of us have forgotten what it means to come home, or even to have a home.

I’ve written here before about what an influence the singer-songwriter Michael Card has had on my life and theology. In this week’s episode, Mike joins me in the studio to talk about the only song of his that I don’t like.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that the song isn’t beautiful; it is. It’s not that it’s not lyrically brilliant; it is. It’s just that, as a father, I find it painful to listen to. A while back, I mentioned something of this in a sermon called “You Are Not Your Gift,” a lesson I’ve started learning from Michael. And, I’m afraid, I’ve still a long way to go. In that sermon, as in much of what I preach, I am the villain to be confronted, the criminal to be crucified.

Mike’s song is about his father, a doctor, who, as Mike put it, never really learned to separate who he was from what he did, himself from his gift. It’s a song about a good man who didn’t quite know how to love his son, and a son who didn’t quite know how to find his Dad.

I think in this conversation there are some good thought-provoking moments for fathers, and for those who have suffered in some way and are not sure how to get past all that now.

You are not your gift.

The song, about how cloudiness in Los Angeles is preferable to sunshine, seems nonsensical at first. Who could get sick of blue skies? But there’s a deeper question here, about the illusions of happiness and the dark side of every utopia.

Let’s listen to Wainwright’s song, and then reflect on how our artificial vision of happiness can wreck our witness and discipleship.

But should we sing it in church? What about the “God and Country” services so many of our congregations hold on national holidays? And, beyond that, how should Christians, citizens of the kingdom of God, think about patriotism? If we’re aliens and strangers here should we identify emotionally with songs, any songs, about our temporary place of sojourn?

On this week’s episode of “The Cross and the Jukebox,” we’ll listen to Mr. Greenwood and then we’ll look at the broader question of the kingdom of Christ and patriotic fervor.

Most of the love songs we hear in our culture assume adolescence, either in fact or in attitude. On this week’s program, we listen in as Frederica Mathewes-Green talks about what she’s learned since she was a hippie sexual revolutionary dismissing “old married people sex” as boring. We talk about why Conway Twitty’s ode to curlers, housecoats, and gray hair sounds so different from what we hear of love in our culture. And we’ll ask what the Book of Proverbs says to all of this.

On this week’s episode of “The Cross and the Jukebox,” I talk to Adam Dorsey, the writer of the hit song “That’s What I Love About Sunday,” recorded by Craig Morgan. Adam is now a pastor in California, and he has a unique perspective on life both sides of Music Row. I ask Adam what it’s like to turn on the radio, anywhere in the world, and hear his own words. I also ask him whether he, a pastor in California, ever feels like he’s wasted his life by ending what could have resulted in a wall full of Grammy and CMA awards.

Then Adam and I listen together to his song, and talk about what it means. Would he have written it differently now, after several years of thinking about Scripture and theology? Does he agree with critics who suggest that his lyrics represent the feminizing of the church and the dregs of Bible Belt spiritual nominalism? Finally, I’ll talk about what I think the song can show us about our neighbors and about Sundays.

And a reference or two to Jon Bon Jovi shows up in there as well.

I loved doing this show, and hope you enjoy it as you listen along with us.

And so I enlisted help from Gregory Alan Thornbury, dean of Union University’s School of Theology and Missions, to talk about the hidden meanings of this great old song. Along the way, we talk about larger issues of rock music, religion, generational tensions, and American culture, and how all that relates to churches and denominations in 2011.

For men, this problem is especially acute. What we term a “midlife crisis” is often simply a man waking up to see that his life isn’t going in the direction of all the dreams of his youth. This can have real, and perilous, spiritual consequences.

On this week’s episode of “The Cross and the Jukebox,” we look at this kind of disappointment. We’ll listen to Merle Haggard’s song “The Way I Am,” and then talk about how the gospel addresses the despair the Hag sings about. Even if you’ve never felt this kind of despair, I wager there’s a man somewhere in your life who has.

There’s a similar feeling of melancholy that sweeps over me when I listen to this song, and for the same reason. The song immerses you in the pleadings of a man explaining to his child why “your mom and me, we couldn’t get along.” I wipe away tears every time I hear this song, just imagining the pain of it all. And I have no idea.

I think this song strikes into something that is everywhere around us. Consciences that are wounded from divorce. In this episode of “The Cross and the Jukebox,” we talk about how, as the church of Christ Jesus, to address those consciences. I don’t think we can do it with merciless judgmentalism…or with justiceless sentimentalism.

In order to address the conscience in this kind of bondage, we’ve got to tell the truth, about divorce…and about the kids. But we’ve got to tell the truth all the way to the Blood.

But the blood abides. And on this episode, I pose the question why. We’ll listen to some covers by Alan Jackson (”Are You Washed in the Blood?”) and Mahalia Jackson (”Power in the Blood”), as we look at why people, even those who don’t know Christ, often want to hear blood in their gospel.

In that class, that day, I decided to pursue a high school senior girl (I was only two years older, so it’s not as creepy as it sounds). I wrote a note, right there in that desk, and my entire life has been shaped by that five minute decision to ask my now-wife Maria if she’d go out with me.

I think about the seeming randomness of that decision a lot when I hear this song, Brad Paisley’s “Two People Fell in Love.” Today on “The Cross and the Jukebox,” we’ll listen to Brad sing and then look at God’s providence and how the little details are part of a big story.

Well, it turns out this song has a lot to do with the so-called “Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy” that raged in American Protestant denominations in the early twentieth century. Beyond that, it has a lot to do with how Christians ought to receive criticism and opposition.

On this week’s episode of “The Cross and the Jukebox,” we listen to Mr. Acuff sing about that speckled bird and look at where it comes from in the Bible, and why it matters. Listen in, and be sure to send me an email to questions@russellmoore.com about what song you’d like us to talk about and why.

But one name stood out for me this week, and that’s Odetta. This week on “The Cross and the Jukebox” we’ll listen to Odetta take on, among others, the cowardly night riders of the Ku Klux Klan in the chillingly beautiful song “God’s Gonna Cut You Down.” Then we’ll discuss why this song taps into a universal human thirst for justice, and a biblical truth about the slow certainty of God’s judgment.

“You can run on for a long time,” Odetta sings. “But sooner or later, God’ll cut you down.”

Listen to this week’s episode here, and send me your suggestions for songs you’d like to talk about to questions@russellmoore.com

It seems that every single week I find myself talking to another married couple being ripped apart by the power of porn. In most cases, it’s the husband who is captivated by this, and in most cases it’s been going on for a long, long time. In a lot of these cases the wives blame themselves, or allow their husbands to blame them. They think the problem is that they’ve gained weight or gotten busy with the kids or just aren’t as sexy as they used to be, or whatever. I have never once seen this to be the case. The problem is with the man’s flight into a fantasy, a fantasy designed to break down the one-flesh union. And this is a temptation every human person is susceptible to.

Moreover, I’ve seen lots of women who believe that submission to their husbands means a kind of powerlessness, a silent suffering in the face of even the most pervasive addiction to this kind of fantasy. I disagree.

So what does this have to do with Loretta Lynn? This week’s episode of “The Cross and the Jukebox” looks at Miss Lynn’s famous song of outrage about cheating. In it she confronts the real issue: the illusions of fantasy, and she commits herself to stand and fight for her man, her marriage, herself.

In this week’s discussion, we look at how much of this kind of outrage ought to show up in threatened Christian marriages, and what the limits of submission are when a union is jeopardized by something that’s just not “woman enough” to be true, good, or beautiful.

On this week’s episode of “The Cross and the Jukebox,” I take a look at this idea in light of the Christian gospel as we listen to Don Williams’s classic old song “Good Ole Boys Like Me.”

I think at the root of Williams’s song is both an appreciation and a fear of southern folk religion, a folk religion that is Christ-haunted but not quite Christian. As Walker Percy put it, in his monumental work Signposts in a Strange Land, the religion of the South is more Stoic than Christian. Percy noted how “curiously foreign” the Decalogue, the Sermon on the Mount, the doctrine of the Body of Christ sound to the southern culture he knew.

“The South’s virtues were the broadsword virtues of the clan as were her vices, too—the hubris of noblesse gone arrogant,” Percy wrote. “The Southern gentleman did live in a Christian edifice, but he lived there in the strange fashion Chesterton spoke of, that of a man who will neither go inside nor put it entirely behind him but stands forever grumbling on the porch.”

Listen to “Good Ole Boys” and then join me for a discussion of why it’s so hard, for all of us, to see past our Stoicism to the gospel that addresses sinners like those Williams Boys (Hank and Tennessee) and us.

I’ve changed my mind about “Me and Jesus.” On this episode of “The Cross and the Jukebox,” we listen to the song, and I tell you what turned me around. We’ll also talk about why this song resonates, with whom, and what the church can learn.

On the second episode of my new podcast “The Cross and the Jukebox,” I take a look at what’s behind the raw emotion of the song, co-written by June Carter (later, of course, June Carter Cash; and that’s part of the story).

The real issue, of course, is about more than lyrics. The lyrics point to something we seem to know at a primal level. Love, and lust, don’t feel rational. Desire is more like a force of nature, and it burns. Why does the Scripture use the language of “fire” and “burning” for love, for lust, for hell, and for God? Why is sexual infidelity such a pull, even for those who rationally know all the reasons it will ruin their lives, and the lives of those they love?

Pour a cup of coffee, pull up a chair, and join me for the second installment of “The Cross and the Jukebox” for a discussion of why “Ring of Fire” resonates with sinners like us.

So why have this conversation every week? Well, first of all, because I’m already having it, and decided to let my friends listen in. When I used to guest-host the Albert Mohler radio program, I would frequently start and end each segment with bumper-music and spend a few minutes talking about what was really going on in the song and how it related to our topic. Since then, I hear from people all over the place who want to continue some of those discussions.

More importantly, I think lyrical music can often get to the bone of what’s really going on in hearts, minds, and culture than abstract discourse can. Our neighbors are often more honest about what they really think and feel when they’re singing than when they’re talking. And so are we.

That’s why, I think, the Apostle Paul interrupted his interrogation by his critics at Mars Hill by quoting their poets. What Paul was doing was not so much “building a bridge to the gospel” at that point as saying, “You don’t really believe what you’re saying. I’ve heard your music. Now let’s talk about Jesus and the resurrection.”

Most often on this podcast, we’ll be talking about country music. Why? Well, first of all, because that’s what I know. Some of the earliest memories I have are of sitting with several generations of my family listening to the Grand Old Opry. The music of Carters and Cash and Jones and Haggard has stayed with me throughout my life. If I’d been born in different circumstances, I’d probably be drawn to different music.

But, more critically, because country music and the genres that created and fueled it (blues, bluegrass, folk) got at something closer to the bone of human existence than the commercialized pop jingles every generation brings forward. And, with this the case, country music (and forms like it, most notably some aspects of hip-hop) can expose the hidden theologies around us, and within us.

Roots music, after all, is remarkably honest about things commercial music often doesn’t want to talk about: despair, loneliness, heartache, sin, redemption, sowing what one reaps. And in so doing, this music often unveils what it looks like to be, in Flannery O’Connor’s words, “Christ-haunted.” Often, in this music, there’s a Christian subtext but no Christianity. There’s some kind of redemption but no crucifixion. There’s grace, and grace abounding, but often grace that sin may abound.

This is how Willie Nelson can end a concert by moving, without comment, from crooning “Whiskey River, Take My Mind” to softly singing “Amazing Grace.” The point isn’t that Willie does this. It’s that he knows stadiums full of concert-goers want him to.

In the music of the Bible Belt, we can hear something of what it means to be simultaneously the Publican and the Pharisee. It’s a religious identity, indeed a “Christian” identity, with a tortured conscience. That’s an awfully heartsick place to be.

So I’d love it if you’d subscribe to the podcast and join me around the jukebox every week. Some of you will know the music I’m playing, and some of you will have never heard anything like it before. I’ll introduce you to some old famous songs and some old obscure songs, and some new stuff too. And then we’ll talk about how what we’ve just heard can help us to love and listen to our neighbors, and to sort out the almost-gospels hidden in our own psyches.

The Bible tells us the world is made up of theologians, some of whom acknowledge the Creator and some of whom don’t (Rom. 1). We need to pay attention to the theologies of John Calvin and John Wesley, yes. But sometimes we also ought to pay a little bit of attention to the theologies of Johnny Cash.