{"id":86,"date":"2012-02-27T14:54:58","date_gmt":"2012-02-27T14:54:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thesupernaturallife\/?p=86"},"modified":"2012-02-27T14:54:58","modified_gmt":"2012-02-27T14:54:58","slug":"lent-law-and-gospel-according-to-johnny-cash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thesupernaturallife\/2012\/02\/27\/lent-law-and-gospel-according-to-johnny-cash\/","title":{"rendered":"Lent, Law and Gospel According to Johnny Cash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thesupernaturallife\/files\/2012\/02\/Johnny-cash-Project-520x326.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-143\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/322\/2012\/02\/Johnny-cash-Project-520x326-300x188.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"188\" \/><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>B<\/em><em>ut I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>When I hear that whistle blowing, I hang my head and cry\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Johnny Cash \u201cFolsom Prison Blues\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s Lent and I\u2019ll be giving up Barry Manilow\u2026 for Johnny\u00a0Cash. Seriously. I\u2019ve created a \u201cCash\u201d station on \u201cPandora\u201d and I\u2019m playing him, religiously. There\u2019s nothing like a stash of Cash when I\u2019m feeling too big\u00a0for my britches. I can count on him to deliver a lethal dose of \u201ctrue\u201d to sober\u00a0my up. He turns me right way round (repentance) and back to Father. Try him. I\u00a0 dare you.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve never known how to peg Johnny Cash. He is \u201cThe Boy Named\u00a0Sue\u201d and \u201cThe Man in Black.\u201d He is country, classic rock, blues, outlaw, folk and\u00a0gospel. Cash was\/is\u2026 Cash. For nearly six decades he rode the rail lines of his\u00a0own deeply personal music \u2013 personal made painfully public. It carried him several\u00a0times in and out of popular acclaim, and under and then through crippling<br \/>\naddictions. Start to finish Cash\u2019s music changed little, though it always\u00a0depicted a man who longed to change himself, but could not. Johnny Cash bellowed\u00a0out one long blatantly public penance borne from the shame of blatantly public\u00a0guilt.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Admitting our guilt, said Cash, is the purist form of sanity.\u00a0He had a profound sense of God\u2019s relentless holiness, and his own relentless\u00a0ungodliness. God, he admitted, always gets the last word.<\/p>\n<p><em>Go tell that long tongue liar<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Go and tell that midnight rider<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Tell the rambler, the gambler, the back-biter<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Tell \u2018em that God\u2019s gonna cut \u2018em down.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Johnny Cash \u201cGod\u2019s Gonna Cut You Down\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s coming, and is he ever ticked!<\/p>\n<p><em>There\u2019s a man going around taking names<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>And he decides who to free and who to blame.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Everybody won\u2019t be treated all the same.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>There will be a golden ladder reaching down when the man <\/em><em>comes around.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Johnny Cash \u201cWhen the Man Comes Round\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Cash levels bad news, first. He damns to hell any \u201cI\u2019m Okay, You\u2019re Okay, It\u2019s All Gonna Be Okay\u201d Pollyanna optimism. Nothin\u2019 and nobody is okay! By laying bare his confession, he demands, as we dare to listen, that we lay bare our own confession. There may be reasons; there are no excuses, and any hope of salvation from our plight of self-inflicted doom is going to prove costly\u2026<br \/>\nto someone.<\/p>\n<p><em>The beast in me has had to learn to live with pain<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>And how to shelter from the rain<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>And in the twinkling of an eye might<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Have to be restrained<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>God help the beast in me.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Johnny Cash \u201cThe Beast in Me\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In the second half of his career, with the persistent mercy of his second wife, June Carter, Cash began to reach out for the grace he\u00a0knew he needed.<\/p>\n<p><em>I never thought I needed help before<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I thought that I could get by \u2013 by myself.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Now I know I just can\u2019t take it anymore.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>With a humble heart, on bended knee,<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I\u2019m beggin\u2019 You, please for help.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Johnny Cash \u201cHelp Me\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Finally, he seemed to both receive forgiveness from God\u00a0and extent forgiveness to himself.<\/p>\n<p><em>I couldn\u2019t manage the problems I laid on myself<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>And it just made it worse when I laid them on somebody else<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>So I finally surrendered it all brought down in despair<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>As Martin Luther once put it, we have the Law and we have\u00a0Gospel, in that order. Listening to Cash helps me remember this; remembering\u00a0keeps me sane, and true. Guilt is my plan for Lent. Full on. Bare and bold.\u00a0Then and only then can I rightly own my role in Friday\u2019s crime. Then and only\u00a0then can I right appreciate Sunday\u2019s surprise ending, and the unfathomable\u00a0sheer gift of eternal freedom issued in my name by His\u2026 <em>\u201cThere is therefore now\u00a0no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus\u201d<\/em> (Romans 8:1).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die When I hear that whistle blowing, I hang my head and cry\u2026 Johnny Cash \u201cFolsom Prison Blues\u201d &nbsp; It\u2019s Lent and I\u2019ll be giving up Barry Manilow\u2026 for Johnny\u00a0Cash. Seriously. I\u2019ve created a \u201cCash\u201d station on \u201cPandora\u201d and I\u2019m playing him, religiously. There\u2019s&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":478,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[17,62,65,66,442,63,64,53],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lent","tag-fast","tag-fat-tuesday","tag-johnny-cash","tag-law-and-gospel","tag-lent","tag-mardi-gras","tag-new-orleans","tag-repent"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Lent, Law and Gospel According to Johnny Cash  - The Super Natural Life - prayers for strength, words of wisdom, daily bible reading<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thesupernaturallife\/2012\/02\/27\/lent-law-and-gospel-according-to-johnny-cash\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lent, Law and Gospel According to Johnny Cash  - The Super Natural Life - prayers for strength, words of wisdom, daily bible reading\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die When I hear that whistle blowing, I hang my head and cry\u2026 Johnny Cash \u201cFolsom Prison Blues\u201d &nbsp; It\u2019s Lent and I\u2019ll be giving up Barry Manilow\u2026 for Johnny\u00a0Cash. 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