Too Close For Comfort: The Church's Unnecessary Rejection Of Modern Faith Heroes
- Derek Webb
- Sep 8, 2005
- Series: Other
“How well I have learned that there is no fence to sit on between heaven and hell. There is a deep, wide gulf, a chasm, and in that chasm is no place for any man.” Johnny Cash
Christian thought and literature are full of great heroes of the faith. Over years I have read and studied the words and lives of men like John Piper, R.C. Sproul, J.I. Packer, and Tony Campolo, and I have gleaned great wisdom from them. They give themselves to the building of God’s Kingdom in overt and beautiful ways. But I’m starting to wonder if there are other Christian heroes that the Church is overlooking because they’re not quite safe, and maybe a little too honest. With such a high premium in Church circles on reputation and conformity, we pass over, and occasionally ostracize those who I believe to be the most influential Christians in modern society. Our inability to identify true faith heroes is an indication that we may have a flaw at the core of our Christian worldview.
What is it that makes a ‘hero’ of the faith? The dictionary defines a hero as, “a person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life.” I think this is a great description. And based on this description, right next to John Piper I would seat Johnny Cash. And next to R.C. Sproul, we would find Flannery O’Conner. And right next to J. I. Packer, we raise U2’s Bono. And the list goes on. But we are too uncomfortable with these individuals. These celebrities are a little too disruptive and messy for us to categorize, or they don’t speak the jargon we are comfortable with. Or maybe we dismiss them because they, like all men, are what Martin Luther described as, “simul justus et pecator” or “both saint and sinner at the same time.” And that is precisely what we are trying to cover in and for ourselves.
Johnny Cash and U2’s Bono are both men who I have studied closely, who have not only been vocal about their faith in their art but have also demonstrated the Christian worldview with their lives. But it doesn’t always look like what we expect. I believe they are just as important to the modern history of the church as these evangelical writers and theologians, if not even more widely influential. Cash and Bono have spent the currency of their celebrity on things that clearly demonstrate Kingdom thinking.
Johnny Cash spent the majority of his long career singing songs about the social outcast and the oppressed. Consider the song ‘The Ballad Of Ira Hayes.’ Here is a true story addressing the racism facing a Pima Indian who was one of the marine heroes returning home after the epic WWII battle at Iwo Jima. He is greeted with discrimination instead of honor, from the country he had sacrificed so heavily to defend. Another example is the beatitude reminiscent, ‘The Man In Black,’ where Cash sings, “I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down, livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town, I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime, but is there because he's a victim of the times.” Whether it’s fighting the injustices and ignorance of racism or caring for the poor and needy in our society, Cash has left a long legacy of great art that has engaged with culture in such a way that demanded respect for his worldview, and all the while risking great peril to his career and reputation.
Bono, of international super-group U2, has always taken rock & roll very seriously. In the early 80’s Bono used his celebrity to raise awareness of those starving in Africa and the atrocities of apartheid with the ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ and ‘Live Aid’ projects. More recently he has been a tireless lobbyist, raising money and awareness of the great needs of those suffering from the pandemic of Aids in Africa, not to mention the founding of the ‘DATA’ organization (Debt, Aids, Trade, Africa). And all of this with no mention of his day job. Along with this activism, U2 has consistently put out best-selling records and played sold-out concerts all over the world that are not only artistic, but also engaging and spiritually charged with tremendous impact on culture.
So in light of all this, why is the American Church so fearful of owning these men as the heroes they appear to be? Simul justus et pecator. As well as being great humanitarians, both have gone through seasons of being known as much for their great art as for their great excesses. Johnny Cash struggled for years with drug addiction and writes about prison time, vengeance, and murder in his songs (but then again so did David in the Psalms). He’s always maintained a rebellious image, punctuated by the magazine ad that he and producer Rick Rubin placed in Billboard Magazine in 1998 mocking the country music industry for their inexcusable lack of support which displayed a picture of Cash giving them his middle finger. Sadly, it was not until Cash’s death that the church began to really celebrate him, and I believe that’s because that was the first time the Church saw him “safe” enough to endorse. Church people don’t want to risk reputation for people like that that are so unpredictable and visible to the watching world. We are careful to avoid that kind of disruption.
Bono, however, is still working to keeping the church on it’s toes. He and his band have intentionally distanced themselves from the Church in America because of the negative connotations that it has earned for itself in the art community. He does not shy away from smoking, drinking alcohol, and using four letter words. Bono even spent the better part of a recent tour dressed up like Satan (a character named ‘Mister MacPhisto,’ which was an metaphor inspired by C.S. Lewis’ ‘The Screwtape Letters’). And we’re not sure what to do with all that.
So here we are, Church people working hard to avoid disruption, to protect our reputation, with an obsessive emphasis on external behavior and conformity to social norms. Does that sound like the Gospel to you? Does that sound like people with radical faith in Jesus, free to love, free to fail, free to struggle to redeem culture and reclaim it for our Father who made it? Our fear of these men comes from our failure to believe the Gospel.
Beyond rhetoric and theological language, the Christian life is either about keeping the law or about putting your faith in One who has kept the law on your behalf. We either have faith in the Law or we have faith in Jesus, and there is no middle ground. It simply cannot be about both. The hard truth is that we are not our Savior. I simply cannot do what Jesus would do. I continue to need the Law because it is the tutor that brings be back again and again to my only Hope. We’re so busy celebrating men that look like Jesus that we’ve forgotten the value of men who look like they need Jesus, and I believe real spiritual maturity looks more like the latter.
For every theology book, we need an artist, or a public school teacher, or an at-home Mom living a radical, disruptive life, out there in God’s world sacrificing for the work of His Kingdom. That is the definition of a hero, the “act of nobility” and the “sacrificing of his life.” We should never believe that our modern faith heroes are anything but men with a great need for Jesus. If we do this we lie to ourselves and to them, and we short circuit the gospel. By this standard men like Bono and Johnny Cash are certainly heroes, ones who teach us more of our need for Jesus.
Originally published in Relevant Magazine, November 18, 2004. Reprinted with permission of the author.
Derek Webb is a singer/songwriter and former member of the band Caedmon’s Call. His most recent album is I See Things Upside Down on INO Records. For more information on Derek, please check-out:www.derekwebb.comor become his friend atwww.myspace.com/derekwebb.
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