I like Bob Dylan, and I really don’t care what you think about me for it. Okay, it’s good to have that out of the way, it’s just going to make everything easier. I’ve just finished four weeks speaking on Proverbs, and by way of celebration I found myself bound for Anglican Formation class on Friday morning. The most important decision on those car rides is the music – and that morning, while sifting through a box of old CDs, I came across a gem – ‘Oh Mercy’ by the man himself.
Go the '80s.
It was recorded in 1989, by which time Dylan had been recording for over 25 years. He’d put behind him the raw, angry hippie-era sentiment of Blowin’ in the Wind, Times They Are a-Changin’ and the like. The thing is, it was easy to sing along (not least of all because I, too, have a rubbish voice) when the lyrics are set against war, against racism, and things like that – it’s a little harder when he turns the blow torch on the self indulgence of modern life. Seems that times haven’t changed that much, at least not since ’89.
But what’s my point in all of this? One thing that Dylan possesses is insight, and the lyrics of the track ‘What good am I?’ in particular describe the outward behaviour that we’ve been looking at in Proverbs. It’s slow and reflective, and ends each verse with the plaintive question – if I fail to live a good life, one that measures up to the values I have, what good am I?
For example, our third talk was on the way that Proverbs addresses how we speak…
“What good am I if I say foolish things
And I laugh in the face of what sorrow brings
And I just turn my back while you silently die,
What good am I?”
Our culture specialises in what Proverbs also calls ‘foolish things’ – gossip, slander, abuse… and as Christians we more often model our culture rather than our God – it made me very aware how those amongst my Christian brothers and sisters spoke in the week that followed – and much to my shame, the way that I often spoke myself.
One of our two main principles for applying Proverbs was that wisdom requires an ability to work out both WHEN a Proverb is true, and HOW that Proverb applies to our situation… and then not just to say it but to do it. It’s the wisdom of James 1: 22 –
“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” (NIV)
“What good am I if I know and don’t do,
If I see and don’t say, if I look right through you,
If I turn a deaf ear to the thunderin’ sky,
What good am I?”
What troubled me the most, I think, is how often we as evangelicals sit in church, nod our heads through the sermons, then wander out into the sun, and within 5 minutes are doing the opposite of the application of the passage we just heard. Jesus called people who did that ‘whitewashed tombs’… Dylan just asks if we can’t be what God has made us to be, what good are we? Of course he misses the spiritual side of the issue completely. This song is really one about works-based worth, if not righteousness - but the principle is there, and I for one find it scary when it takes the secular media to remind us of the truth that we should be leading in.
