Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Richard 0:00
I do think, you're right, I think being a prophet is is very lonely. But I think we kind of burn out a lot when our prophetic work is all just about outrage online about the current political climate. And my sense is that people that get kind of getting burnout, or tend not to be kind of local spaces with real people and real acts of kindness and compassion. And so yeah, you're just going online and you're triggered all over again, and you're just kind of like 24/7 you're in a stress response. And that's just not sustainable. So I would say shut down the social media for a week and, you know, volunteer somewhere in your local community where you're actually engaging in life giving relationships with people. And that's probably a more tangible, fulfilling way, of mending the world than just being upset all the time about what's going on on Twitter.
Seth Price 1:02
Everybody, welcome back to the show. It is almost Easter like this is the week before Easter. And a lot has changed, hasn't it? Like we can't go out. You can't be in community and love on one another at least we shouldn't be. Yeah, it unsettles me. And I'm sure it also unsettles you. So I'm thankful that we can still do things like this and have community online and just to plug one of those. I've got a Facebook group called Can I Say This At Church Honest Discussions in which I mean, it's really a good group, really good conversations, really good questions and answers and people doing life a little bit together digitally, if that's possible. And I'm really thankful for that group. In times, like what we're in now, if you're able, if that's something that you feel willing to do if in the past something in one of these episodes has really spoke to you or you walked away or listened away, thinking about something that you heard, please go over to Patreon. dot com / Can I Say This At Church or to the website and click the Patreon button, become a supporter of the show. This show is 100% Produced by them. And I am so very thankful for them. Today I spoke with Richard Beck.
Richard comes back as a second time guest on the show we spoke a long time ago I actually recorded with him I think December of 2017. About a book that he'd written at the time called Stranger God about welcoming other people about Matthew 25. And he has a new book out about Johnny Cash and if I'm honest, I don't really listen to a lot of Johnny Cash. Though I started to as I read this book and prepared for this conversation. What I found was I really liked Johnny Cash, first off, welcome to the party Seth, just really late. But what I found is the gospel is able to be delivered in so many different mediums and formats. And so what does that sound like as a prophetic voice from a country music singer? What does that sound like from a guy that sings about murder on track one, sings about his wife on track two, and then sings about shooting a guy on track three. And then maybe we do amazing grace after that. I love this convo. I hope you do. Here we go with Dr. Richard Beck.
Seth Price 3:33
Dr. Beck, welcome back to the show. We were teasing a minute ago, and it's been almost three years since I last spoke to you. So thanks for saying yes back then. I've actually listened to those old ones. I began transcribing the podcast back in like December or so and so far, I'm up to almost 800,000 words, because I'm ridiculously ill prepared for that. But I realized in listening back to the old ones, how much more comfortable I've gotten asking questions about God so thanks for bearing with me back in the day in the conversation that I liked but yeah.
Richard 4:07
Hey no worries I’m glad to be back with you.
Seth Price 4:10
Yeah I saw your face when I said transcribing it is exactly that. I did like one episode at like episode 80 something and then I realized, shoot, you can't just transcribe episode 80 something and never do it again. So whatever I was ignorant of the commitment that that was gonna take. So I wanted to say thank you for coming back on and then I just asked just for the listener so since 2017 like what's new for you? Like what have you been up to?
Richard 4:41
What did…what did we talking about back then?
Seth Price 4:45
(Laughs)
We talked about Unclean. No, we talked about Stranger God. We talked a lot about disgust, contempt about the church being afraid to put anything broken that makes us feel slightly broken up on the stage. I feel like we hovered around politics but I was afraid to talk about politics, which oddly enough we're recording this on the eve of the Democratic Super Tuesday.
We will probably still skirt it because why not? I don't know how you cannot today. But yeah, it's been a long time since I thought about that episode so I don't know exactly. All but that's the high points.
Richard 5:20
Um, well, not a lot I mean, I wrote the book I think we're talking about tonight about Johnny Cash and I'm finishing up another one right now. It is called right now that the title I was just informed by the publishers called Hunting Magic Eels.
Seth Price 5:41
Eels? Like the snake things?
Richard 5:43
Yeah, but the subtitle is Recovering An Enchanted Faith in A Skeptical Age. And that is a more descriptive title. So it's about enchantment and disenchantment stuff I kind of talked about in my book, Reviving Old Scratch, about how atheism, agnosticism, the nones, are kind of a just a general trend towards skepticism and disenchantment, right, struggling to believe in the supernatural. And I found myself being kind of an apologist for faith in my college classrooms. And so I spent a lot of time trying to kind of make an argument for faith for belief with millennials and Gen Z and so this book kind of is about that. It's about how to kind of recover the experiential aspect of faith and kind of a very skeptical age.
And Hunting Magic Eels, I think they just picked it because it's a whimsical title. But I start off the book in Wales with some friends, my friend, Hannah and my wife. We were visiting a Welsh Island, where pilgrims would come to this island because the legend was there was this well, imagine like a holy well that kind of magical eels in it. If you put a handkerchief or something in it a token from a lover, and the eels disturbed it, that would be a sign that your love would be faithful throughout life. And, yeah, so it was just this huge pilgrimage site.
So I just kind of start the book about being in this kind of very Celtic Christian place looking for this, you know, ancient holy well that had these magical eels in it. And then that just kind of begins as a counterpoint to how like the world has changed so much since that time.
But I do have a great chapter in the book about Celtic Christianity kind of their mystical bent and their embrace of nature. And so that's a big theme in the book as well, kind of a experiencing God everywhere in the world, even in the natural world. So it's about the enchantments of faith and how we're we're struggling a little bit with that and how we might recover it.
Seth Price 7:49
Is that a fun conversation? So your psychology professor for those not paying attention to the episode I think it's seven, or to the show notes because I don't think they people read those. So is that conversation getting more difficult? Like as kids come into class and you're like, oh, we're doing this again? Oh, you got a new argument. I see you're further nuanced, or is it the same thing over and over?
Richard 8:14
Like, lecturing as a college professor?
Seth Price 8:16
yeah. But when you're talking about like the disenfranchisement and the the skepticism of the students as you're trying to make a case for belief, it sounds like not necessarily Christian belief, but just belief overall, although I have a feeling you'll take that bent is that are they getting worse? Are they the same like that the arguments that they're bringing to class as the generations come and go?
Richard 8:38
I don’t know that they're coming in with arguments. But if you just kind of look at the rates of belief, and just the demographic decline in the church, it's just they're not coming in, because I'm a Christian University so the students are coming to like hardcore atheists and they're ready to argue. But it's just that their beliefs are getting more and more fragile and a lot of them you know, just statistically are going to kind of walk off from faith very quickly. And a lot are already in the process of walking off from faith and leaving church. And so it's not necessarily I'm dealing with hostility or strong counter arguments as much as that faith is kind of increasingly just kind of “whatever, I mean maybe I believe in God, maybe I don't. I don’t know that it matters.”
Seth Price 9:20
Yeah, my parents paid for me to come here so I'm here.
Richard 9:23
Yeah, it's more that kind of thing faith is getting so light so people kind of walk off from it without any sort of consequence. And just it's easy to let it go because it doesn't mean much anymore. And it's not like they're even walking towards towards like hardcore disbelief, they're walking towards maybe a spiritual but not religious stance. They might describe themselves as a group of like freakishly religious.
Seth Price 9:58
Yeah, well, that sounds fun. When does that come out? I'm excited to read that. I'm gonna preorder it because that is up my alley. That sounds that sounds fun. Not the eels so much. But the rest sounds fine.
Richard 10:08
Hey, it the title. So we'll see how it goes, magical eels.
They asked me what I think about that title and I go, “Well, people will pull off the shelf and go what's that!”
Seth Price 10:16
I'm more concerned, what's the cover look like?
Richard 10:20
Just a mass of eels or something, I don’t know. I don't try to worry myself with too much that stuff. But all that to say the rough draft is due next month, and then it will take six months to a year. So this time next year, maybe?
Seth Price 10:41
So the reason I brought you on today, and I want to say thank you, either to you or to the publisher for sending the book. I really appreciate that, it was it was a joy to read. And for those that know me well, music is like my jam. I'm the person that gets tagged in post saying hey, I need to stuff for this or stuff for this. But I've really never listened to Johnny Cash and I don't actually know why. And so as I read through your book a bit, which the title of it is Trains, Jesus, and Murder. The Gospel According to Johnny Cash, I don't want to end on murder. So I had not really listened to a lot of him and I found myself recently, just hitting play, like literally, I purchased Spotify for the sole reason so that I could do that. Because I got really tired that I couldn't pick and choose what songs because I don't like them all. But um, how did you kind of get into wanting to mix Jesus and Johnny Cash together in a book where you're like, this matters, people should pay attention to the man in black?
Richard 11:41
Yeah, I wasn't a huge fan either. I mean, I knew a little bit about him. I saw the movie, Walk the Line.
Seth Price 11:47
Great movie.
Richard 11:49
It's a great movie. And so you know, it's kinda like Americana. You know a little bit about Elvis, you know, a little bit about Johnny Cash. But anyway, I teach a Bible study. I think we've talked about this before, out of the prison on Monday nights. And couple years ago just grabbed like in a discount bin a CD Cashes live at Folsom Prison in 68. And I thought, you know, this would be great to listen to you on the way out to the Bible said, listen to this live prison concert. And so I just started listening to the album. And if you listen to it, it's just really a very different kind of album. You just hear the yelling and the stomping and cheering of the audience.
And you can just feel the gratitude that they felt for him, and the connection between Cash and that prison audience and then that obviously was reflecting a lot of what I was experiencing on Monday nights out of the prison, the gratitude, the connection I had with the prisoners. And so that just got me really interested in his music. What's this guy doing in a prison? What's this connection he has with the incarcerated.
So then I bought his follow up album Live at San Quentin started listening to that out album. So I think those two prison albums kind of hooked me right around this time. Robert Hilburn kind of published what a lot of people think is now the definitive biography about Cash. So I read the biography and then kind of listen my way through his entire career beginning and end then that made me kind of a fan. And then I just started noticing that whole time just noticing a lot of gospel connections with his music, what he did with his music, but also in his own struggles. He, if you've seen the movie or you know anything about his life, he struggled with drug addiction. So his journey toward grace, his dealing with his own inner demons, how that came out in his music was it also a big part of it? So yeah, that just kind of culminated an idea of kind of maybe telling the Gospel story through his life and his music.
Seth Price 13:48
So I want to hit on some of the high points in the book. And I remember saying this in the first episode, because I say it to many people. I don't want to give away the bulk of the book because that's just not fair. And people should buy the book. I like the chapter titles because I realized that those were songs about halfway in. And it took me about that long I realized, oh my god, you're an idiot, such an idiot. Which then if you listen to the song next to the chapter makes a whole lot more sense. But again, I'll express my ignorance. The only song that I knew, well from Johnny Cash was Hurt, and Ring of Fire. And honestly Hurt just because it was in the Wolverine trailer. (Richard laughs) And it became, I don't know if you've ever seen that movie, it was actually really good, I'm assuming you've seen it. Maybe you haven't seen it? Yeah, I don't know which one of the Wolverines it was but either way, anyway, so you talk about the use the word solidarity in the end, I think you say in there or paraphrasing that like the cross is used as an act of solidarity, like the way that Johnny Cash is ministering to people is an act of solidarity.
But when I hear solidarity, I think when most people hear solidarity, the way that you're using I don't think is the way that most people say it. So what do you mean when you're saying like the cross or you're implying that cross is like an act of solidarity or like a gospel of solidarity.
Richard 15:04
Yeah. So I mean, by solidarity, I just mean kind of standing with being with come alongside. And so you know, one way to think about the cross, a lot of people when they think about the cross are gonna think of the cross as Jesus's died on the cross for our sins. But another way to think about the cross is that the cross is kind of a compass-it's a way of locating God in the world. And so we asked the question, “where is God in the world”? And the answer is hanging on the cross. And then your eyes and your heart and mind are going to move to where bodies are hanging on crosses, you know, literally or metaphorically. So your heart and mind is going to go to the edges of the margins of society because that's where Jesus was crucified. He's crucified outside the camp.
So the way I'm defining it is that solidarity has got kind of God's divine, in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, kind of divine solidarity with victims, with the marginalized and (with) oppressed. And if that's the case, then Cash’s music is a great example of the Gospel because his music frequently spoke up for like in the song, “The Man in Black”,
I wear black for the poor and the beaten down living in the hopeless hungry side of town,
So his voice, musically and artistically, and his music kind of goes to the edges of society and sings, for them, the way Jesus stands with the godforsaken on the cross.
Seth Price 16:33
Yeah, I want to push further on the margins and on the society. So often, as I've listened to Cash’s music, I often find that he teeters between rage-I think rage is the right word-like almost like a prophetic rage. Like the way that Isaiah would yell at people or the way that Ezekiel would yell at people or the way that people like what are you doing you're doing it wrong. Stop it. This is awful. I find myself reflecting if I'm going to hear a prophetic voice and so we'll use Cash as a prophetic voice or should we use you as a prophetic voice, why not? How would you advise as people are dealing or viewing a lens, because I would recommend, again, getting the book reading through it. But when you have a prophetic voice talking to the margins, especially today, I shoot even today during the Primaries, people will say when you speak to the prophetic margins, or whatever, that you are just a social justice warrior, or you're Communist or socialist, or whatever the word is. So how do you hear a prophetic voice and engage in a prophetic voice, like take it in internalize it and then take action without being vilified as something antithetical to whatever the status quo is?
Richard 17:49
Well, I mean, that's a great question because I think Cash’s own career he experienced some of those tensions. One of the chapters in the book is…so you're right every chapter in the book is built on a Cash song. yes. So the Chapter The Ballad by our haze is about an album he recorded called Bitter Tears. Now, a lot of people don't know about that one, but it's basically an album of Native American protest songs. So he sings this entire album from the perspective of Native Americans who have been kind of exploited by the hands of the American Empire. And it's a harsh album, it's hard to read American history from that perspective, but it's the truth, right? And so he felt really passionate about that. But it didn't get any airplay. Right, because again, it's a hard message. It's not going to sell any records its not popular to hear that. There's some hard songs in that album.
And so he actually had to take out this whole page ad in Billboard Magazine and the opening line of the ad was, you know, it was like DJs and radio managers, where are your guts? And so he takes out this full page ad kind of calling out the courage, or (more directly) the lack of courage in the country music establishment and the radio stations that will refuse to give airplay to this highly prophetic record. And he burned a lot of bridges and spent a lot of his social capital trying to get airplay for that album.
So you're right, I think sometimes the Prophet has struggled to be heard in many ways. I think there's lots of things we can say about that, but I think one of the things that helps give to a voice is if you are at least self reflective about yourself. And I think people could hear Cash sing prophetic songs because he would also sing songs that spoke to their own brokenness. And so I think solidarity has to be leavened with grace and mercy and a confessional posture towards your own sinfulness. And I think maybe sometimes that's lost a little bit in online and on Twitter, so social justice Twitter, is that lack of looking in the mirror. The lack of humility and Cash was a really humble guy too, you know us a very down to earth kind of guy. So he himself in his person was hard to dislike. So I think we’ve got to season our prophetic voice with a degree of confessional humility and a lot of grace.
Seth Price 20:23
I want to dig in and I don't remember reading it in the book but I want to pick the other part of your brain. So healthfully…healthfully is that a word? I think that's a word. How does one do that?
I feel like the role of a prophet is one that's lonely. It's one that's isolated. And it's one of depression almost. And so, as we're listening to those voices, or as we feel called to use our voice in that way, what are some things that you feel like we could do to do it healthily to make sure that we don't spiral into something unhealthy causing trauma or causing damage to ourselves; or should that even be the point?
Richard 21:03
Yeah, that's a really big conversation. I think one of the chapters to talk about in the book is I talk about the song, “give my love to rose” where this guy dying by the railroad tracks and I kind of use that chapter to talk about kind of the intimate, face to face, more local aspects of, of engagement. And I do think you're right. I think being a prophet is very lonely. But I think we kind of burn out a lot when our prophetic work is all just about outrage online about the current political climate.
And my sense is that people are kind of getting burnout, or tend not to be kind of local spaces with real people in real acts of kindness and compassion. And so yeah, yeah, you're just going online and you're triggered all over again. And you're just kind of like 24-7 in a stress response. And that's just not sustainable. So I would say kind of shut down the social media for a week and you know, volunteer somewhere in your local community where you're actually engaging in life giving relationships with people. And that's probably a more tangible, fulfilling, way of mending the world than just being upset all the time about what's going on Twitter.
Seth Price 22:32
Yeah, I would agree. I have two Twitter's one that I have that I just follow people that inspire me. And then there's the other that honestly is a dumpster fire, but I go into it when I really want to be hateful on purpose, like intentionally, like, just yell at the void, knowing full well that nobody's going to read it because there's hardly any followers there. I just want to yell at the void with minimal repercussions as possible. Just to do it.
Richard 22:59
It is cathartic.
Seth Price 23:01
It feels great. It's better than yelling down here in the basement waking my kids up. Um, can I read you a bit of something that you wrote?
Richard 23:09
Sure
Seth Price 23:11
So there's a part in here in the “Legend of John Henry's Hammer”, and that's the chapter that I'm in. So you talk about a call for economic solidarity. You talk a bit about what's it say at the bottom here, that effectively, it talks about the American dream, and embedded deeply in the American psyche is a belief that if you are honest and hardworking, you simply cannot be poor. And then you say Johnny Cash knew that this was a lie. And I'd like to talk a bit about that, because as I read that I thought about the prosperity gospel, but it seems like something more and something also that. So can you talk a bit about economic solidarity and how that relates to the way that we do church and community today?
Richard 23:55
Yeah, I mean, the point of that chapter is he kind of pushed back a little bit upon kind of the meritocracy. The belief that in America, “everybody has a level playing field.” And if you're just a hard working, virtuous person, you just cannot but be at least solidly middle class. But Cash grew up in like depression era Arkansas. And so he saw hard working people who were poor. And it wasn't due to a lack of virtue and it wasn't due to lack of a work ethic. But sometimes the economic situation is just stacked against you. So when I talked about Johnny Cash knew that was a lie, what I'm reflecting on is his intimacy with poor rural people, and how they were poor through no fault of their own. And so I'm trying to expand out from that to just kind of say there is a tendency, I think, in Christianity and in certain political sectors to moralize poverty that the only reason you're poor in this great nation is that there's something wrong with you. So we can to point the poor and blame them. And so I think the first step of economic solidarity is stepping back and looking at the systemic forces that kind of are stacked against people and do what we can to change those systems, or, you know, or at a bare minimum, stop pointing fingers and blaming them for the circumstances that they find themselves in; and also own, conversely, your own fortunate situation. A lot of us would take credit for success in life without kind of taking into account that we inherited a great deal of wind in our back. Well, just being honest about that, I think puts you in a better, more sympathetic, posture to stand in solidarity with somebody because through no fault of their own they're struggling. To no virtue of my own my life has been relatively more easy.
Seth Price 25:58
Yeah as you were researching Cash what is kind of his intersection with the church over the course of his life and his career? Like, how did he plug in in his day and age into the church? Or did he at all? How did that play well, or did it play well at all?
Richard 26:17
Well, I think he grew up going to church. But then I think in the early years of his career, he kind of walked away from the church. And so he really only kind of reengage, I'd say the church. He always was involved in Christianity because it was deeply embedded. He read the Bible every day, he sang gospel music, so he was always a very Christian person. But as far as like being invested in a local church community, that didn't really happen until kind of after he kind of dealt with his inner demons. So right around, you know, (19)68-69 when he starts kind of getting sober again does he kind of really formally engaged back in a local church community there Nashville. And he also kicked up a friendship with Billy Graham and started doing Billy Graham Crusades. So he becomes almost a very overt evangelist. And that kind of middle part into his career. He wrote a book about the Apostle Paul. He did a full length feature film called The Gospel Road, about the life of Jesus. So he became a very over kind of Christian role model.
And a lot of people think that that's kind of actually when his music kind of took a hit during the 80s. When he was most overtly evangelist. He lost a bit of his artistic edge at that point. And that's an interesting reflection point to about can you be a really good artist if you're just proselytizing?
Seth Price 27:41
Do you think that he lost an edge like as you've dove into him?
Richard 27:45
Yeah, so after he peaks with at Folsom Prison and in San Quentin, he gets a variety show in the early 70s called the Johnny Cash Show. And that kind of spells the end of your kind of cultural relevance. If they give you a music variety show.
Seth Price 28:02
Yeah, you're just you're just the opening act for everyone else.
Richard 28:06
Right. And so at this point he's kind of hitting his generational peak where he's now starting to get to the nostalgic. (I mean) who's tuning into the Johnny Cash Show? Well, people that listened to him in the 50s when we hang out with our walk the line in Folsom Prison Blues, right? So the 20 year olds that were listening to him when he was releasing in 55-56, as far as music, they're, you know, they're now 35-40 years old tuning into primetime TV. So the young people aren't listening to him. So he was pretty successful in the 70s. But a lot of people consumed the 80s his last decade, you just did anything of interest, until Rick Rubin showed up his life in the early 90s.
Seth Price 28:49
Yeah, it took a little bit of hip hop to bring him back to life. I didn't realize that Rick Rubin produced those what's it like three or four albums back to back to back that.
Richard 28:59
Yeah four albums right the end of Cash’s life and a lot of people think some of the best music he ever did.
Seth Price 29:04
I always say the name wrong Delia? I didn't really I think that's the one you write about in the book that like MTV wouldn't play. Is it that one or was it a different one?
Richard 29:16
No, it was “Delia’s Gone” gone, it's about domestic homicide. And Kate Moss, I believe plays the corpse. And there's a scene in there where I think he puts her in the grave and throws dirt on her and it was just too dark that, you know, it's a song about a murder. And he's burying her and so MTV thought was too dark.
Seth Price 29:37
They're fine with gyrating everything else. But we can't talk about real life things because apparently death doesn't actually happen-doesn't come for us all. How does one sing gospel music, make documentaries, connect with Billy Graham, become an evangelist but then also show up and maybe on a Thursday talk about pumping slugs into people and and just other things. He sees a lot of murder ballads, which I find with the tempo that he does them you don't kind of realize that they're murder ballad until you're about halfway and you're like, Oh, this went there. This got real-real fast. Especially if you're like me, you're like, I can handle this I can do. What did he say? What did he say‽
So how can you juxtapose those two? Because I think if I said, like, if I went to work, and I'm like, yeah, I'm a practicing Christian. But also, let me tell you about my favorite song about killing people. That would be just great. Like, how do you combine those two?
Richard 30:32
Well, yeah, well, that's kind of where the title comes from. So my son Aiden is the one that came up with the title. So during this time, I was listening to a lot of Johnny Cash in the car. He's obviously in the car and listening with me and so we were driving to school one day, and he looks at me goes “dad, Johnny Cash seems to sing about only three things: trains, Jesus and murder.” That would be a great title of a book son. But it's true. He sings about gospel songs. And then you'll see murder ballads. He did his concerts that way.
And so the tension I play with in the book is the way that kind of Saint/sinner, the light and the darkness kind of mixes in all of us. I think there's that famous quote, right that the line that divides good from evil is a line that runs through every heart. And so, yeah, murder might be a little bit strong, but I think all of us have great capacity for cruelty and hate. And we also have great; in the same person, great capacity for love and compassion. So in the great Lutheran formulation, we're all simultaneously saints and sinners.
And I experienced that out at the prison every Monday night right here, guys, they're literally murderers. But yet they're also very beautiful human beings to me and grace comes to me in them all the time. Right, that's strange to get Jesus coming to you from a murderer. But that's the reality.
And so the other thing I'd say here too, is I think one of the reasons why Cash is such a compelling artist is because he's able artistically to sing to the full bandwidth of the human moral experience. He's able to see Jesus and murder. And there's a kind of a truthfulness and authenticity to that people are attracted to where I think a lot of Christianity and Christian entertainment just restricts itself to the good. And it's like, but that becomes kind of a diet of cotton candy.
Seth Price 32:36
Positive and encouraging.
Richard 32:38
And it's not an artistic it just becomes again, kind of like we're about kind of propaganda or kitsch, preaching to the choir, to the already converted. So country music, I think is also really good at that because it'll sing about pretty dark people in places, but also singing about Jesus. And so Cash i think is just an example. Kind of a larger trend within country music to singer across the whole bandwidth of life.
Seth Price 33:33
I wanted to ask you about, well, firstly, I wanted to talk to you about Satan for the longest time. I've just never been able to connect with you on it. But that's not what we're going to talk about here. But we can if you want…
Richard 33:46
Yeah, we can talk about Satan all day long…
Seth Price 33:47
If I remember right, I thought about emailing you like last August and I was like, hey, let's talk about the devil for Halloween. This will be great. And, then I don't even know if I ever hit send. It's on me. We'll maybe we'll figure that out after the end of the
Richard 34:03
Yes, we can figure out when to talk about Satan, (anytime)
Seth Price 34:04
To be honest, I haven't read (your book on Satan), but I wanted to read it and then prepare and then we have a good conversation. Yeah, sure. There's a part in here that blew my mind. So in Sunday Morning Coming Down, you draw a parallel and I had never read this and II Kings and then just so for those people in the background, not listening. So Ahaziah??? I don't know how to say his name. Ahaziah the King of Israel. So you talk about he suffers a fall he gets hurt and what he does is he goes and he consults Beelzebub, which means literally “the lord of flies”. And you draw a distinction there of demons and idolatry and the propensity I guess, not necessarily just for Cash to do that, probably for us all. Can you talk a bit about demons and idolatry and how those two are connected? Because when I think of idolatry, I think of like, you know, like I make my phone an idol like that. That's what my attention goes to or like this one I'm thinking about?
Richard 35:05
Well, I mean, I think that's a good, that's a good connection. Yeah, so in the book I talked about, in the gospels, how Satan is described as Beelzebub. And the Prince of Demons. And scholars don't really know where that name comes from the one idea is that Beelzebub comes from this Canaanite deity in II Kings, Ba’al is above. And so Ba’al is the Canaanite word for Lord. And zebube is the Canaanite word for flies, and so Lord of the Flies. So Ba’al Zebub which becomes Beelzebub in the New Testament.
And the point I'm making that story is King Azaiah he falls, he's hurt, but instead of turning toward Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, he turns instead to this “Lord of the Flies”. And so there's an interesting connection here between the demonic between Beelzebub between the Lord of the Flies and turning to a false god for relief. And so idolatry, all through Scripture, is kind of tied up in the demonic, right. So the false gods of the nations, which the idols represent, you know, if you watched the development in the New Testament gradually, you know, Paul's quite explicit, the false gods of the nation's are demons. He says, literally, the pagans sacrifice to demons.
And so idolatry is intimately associated with the demonic. All that to say is, you're right then. So if you think about your iPhone, or you think about well Cash, in this case, I was talking about his drug addiction. If you think about the things that we turn to, the things we lean on, the things we are addicted to, then properly you can call those forms of demon possession, right. They're forms of idolatrous worship towards the Lord of the Flies. So wherever we're turning away from God and towards some sort of idol, in a dependent kind of way, you can kind of always hear this buzzing sound right? You can hear the flies swarming.
Seth Price 37:08
I want to try to ask this question in a way that isn't...I don't know how to ask this question. And so if I say it wrong, tell me and I'm gonna try to re-ask it. I've recently been talking with so many people and many of them has said that the way that many, especially in our country, but overall, like, we have an addiction to religion and no relationship with God. So in that framework, do you feel like religion could be a demonic form of idol? And I'm aware of how bad that I don't know if I'm saying that well.
Richard 37:40
Oh, no, no, I think (you are). So one of my favorite voices here to kind of connect it back with the prophetic is Walter Brueggemann. You know, Walter Brueggemann?
Seth Price 37:54
I do, I’ve spoken with Walter, he's great.
Richard 37:56
Yeah, yeah, but I think the best book ever wrote his book called The Prophetic Imagination. And his argument is he goes back to Exodus and Moses and he says, you know, when we think of Moses going to Pharaoh, he says, set my people free. He says actually the first slave that has to be freed in Egypt is God. Right?
So Egypt, royal Egypt, has to envision that God could be over against them in a critical capacity; does this make sense? And so there's always this temptation for the religious community to own God and make God’s voice equivalent to our voices. And whenever that happens, whenever God and i agree and everything I think God thinks and God kind of basically baptizes everything my faith community or my nation believes, the minute there's no daylight between us and God, then God at that point has been captive. God has been made a slave. Now God has been made in our own image so that's an idol.
So the first activity of the prophet is to create this kind of prophetic imagined capacity that the God you believe in is actually “over there” to go back to the idea solidarity. God is actually over there with those people. Guys standing on the outside of your boundaries, God is at the fences of your nation. Right, God is on the other side of the railroad tracks. God might even be with your enemy speaking a prophetic word against you.
The ability to imagine that is, to me, the best way we keep our religion free from idols. Instead of the cozy God always agreeing with me it is the uncomfortable restless sense that God might actually be speaking word against me. And that's kind of one of things I talked about in this book about Cash. I talk less about religion, but more about nationalism and patriotism. Cash sang a lot of nostalgic music about America. And so I didn't want the book just to be this kind of like everything he sang was unproblematic and easily an example of the gospel message because I struggled a bit in our current political context, with the patriotic nostalgic music that he sang. And so in this chapter I wrestle with the way, you know, kind of God and nation and nostalgia, you know, God is for us and always against the people we're against.
And so, I talked about how Cash was able, though, as an artist to sing songs that were critical of America. So a good example of that is the one we just talked about “Bitter Tears”. So here's a whole album and he's singing songs that are pretty critical of America. And, nowadays, it's like, if you are critical of your country then you're unpatriotic. And so to me, the way you keep your religion and your nationalism free from those temptations of idolatry is to continue to cultivate, like Cash I think demonstrated, that prophetic capacity to allow God to say something negative about you. Because the minute that capacity is lost and you can't say anything critical of America, (and) you can't say anything critical of your Christianity or your church without that being considered a sign of disloyalty-that's an idol. Like at that moment, the prophetic capacity is lost. And we're now in an idolatrous situation.
Seth Price 41:31
Yeah. I want to ask you two more questions, maybe? Well, I definitely have one more question because I've been asking everybody the same question. I am ashamed to admit so it's the chapter called The Man Comes Around. I learned more about the book of Revelation in your breakdown and the song together, because nobody really preaches on Revelation. And when they do, I don't know what I'm listening to at least in the church that I attend, like we just don't talk about Revelation a lot. We did spend a considerable amount of time in the prophets over the summer, but not much on Revelation. At a very high level without burying the lead or anything like, what would …. ugh…I don't know how to ask this question….
So, I guess my question is this, if Cash came back and sang one more song in one more church, and we're just gonna put every Christian in the same church, and he sang this song, like, this is the one that he sings.
Richard 42:30
“The Man Comes Around”?
Seth Price 42:31
Yeah, what do you feel like the congregation would hear him singing? Like, what would they be called to?
Richard 42:38
Well see, that's a great question. Because a lot of people love that song because it's an old school kind of Judgment Day kind of song if you’ve never heard it. It's basically
the man comes around taking names, he decides who to free and who to blame. Everybody won't be treated all the same.
And so it's a very judgmental, non politically correct kind of song. So I try to wrestle with that song in the book. Because, you know, again I'm reflecting on theologically, well I'm not just gonna be like man I love that song! It's the same way…have you ever seen that the heard him sing the song “God's Gonna Cut You Down”?
Seth Price 43:17
I don't know if I've heard that one.
Richard 43:19
Watch the video. So it's a cover he does this whole thing, which is called“God's Gonna Cut You Down” but it's got all these Hollywood people singing this song right? All these people, these little Hollywood elites singing the song “God's Gonna Cut You Down” like you believe that? You know, like that’s kind of harsh revivalistic religion. So it's kind of interesting to see kind of liberals singing “God's Gonna Cut You Down”. But I guess everybody has their vision of who that person is going to be. So that's one way to think about it.
Yeah. So the one thing I tried to talk about in the book of Revelation is like, Revelation is going to quickly go off the railroad tracks and I think Johnny Cash’s “God's Gonna Cut You Down” is going to go through our tracks if we don't understand the central regulating metaphor in the book which appears in Revelation 4 & , when John turns and sees the Lamb who has been slain ruling from the throne. And if you read all of that warfare and judgment imagery in Revelation through, if you read it literally, then yeah, it's pretty horrific. But if you constantly read it through the metaphor that the way God achieves God's victory, the way God fights God's battles, the way God's power will manifest, the way God's judgment will, you know, is through the cross of Christ through God's self donating, self-giving love. If that's God's victory, if that's God's weapon, the blood of the Lamb, then I think we have a way to interpret that language of judgment or mentally reframe what the scales will be. How will your life be weighed or measured?
So I think to answer your question honestly, a lot people when they hear“God's Gonna Cut You Down”, or they think “When The Man Comes Around” yeah, they're gonna think people who deserve God's punishment because they're pagans, or they have to have the group in mind that God's gonna damn. But if you read my chapter it might be you that is being weighed in the balance and found wanting because of your lack of charity and love towards those people.
So I say Judgment Day is coming but a lot of us might debate about what the criteria is going to be. And I think Johnny Cash was very clear. And he said it, you know, that love is the criteria by which we'll all be judged. And if that's going to be the way we're all going to be if a man comes around, and we're all going to be weighed by how much we've loved each other. Well, then I don't know i think that's that's not a bad judgment, right. That's it's not a bad way to live your life to think that my own ultimate, my stand, at the judgment seat of God that I have to give accounting for how well I loved other people. That might be terrifying, we might not like the idea that you haven't given accounting, but if you're going to have to give it a kind of that's not a bad accounting to give.
Seth Price 46:15
It also kind of mirrors what Christ said, you know, just “love your neighbor, love your God”. Like this is the criteria for people that want to follow me. Just if you could do this, that would be great. So I do want to end on that final question.
So when you say the word God, and so in this case, the guy that was doing the judging there, what are you intending to say? Like if I was a student in your class, and you're like, here, let me tell you about God. What are you actually trying to communicate when you say those words or that metaphor?
Richard 46:46
Well I mean as a Christian, you're only going to be able to know God as much as that God reveals God's self to you. So God's gonna ultimately be a mystery unless God bridges the gap. So I would say the God I confess and believe in is most clearly exemplified in Christ. So my definition of God is very Christological. So, he is the image of the invisible God. He displays the divine nature.
And so I think 1 John summarizes it really well right God is love. One of the reasons I'm a Christian like I signed up for the team that like, said those three words “God is love”. Like I'll go with that. But the hard part about that is, is that that love is is also cruciform. And so to me, God is not just love but cruciform because a lot of us are lovers in our own minds. But when love is costly (and) hard. When it involves loving one's enemies, there's not a whole lot of people that sign up for that, right, for that journey. And so I don't want to say God is love in a trite way because I think it's the hardest thing you can attempt in your life. Like if you really try to love everyone the way Jesus says it in Luke, because you know, he says your Father in Heaven is kind to the wicked and the ungrateful. He sends his sun in his rain upon good and not good. He's kind to the wicked and the ungrateful, go and be children of your Father in heaven.
Well, that man, to be kind to the wicked and the ungrateful. You know, I don't care how liberal or tolerant or social justice warrior you are, all of us struggle with being kind to the wicked and ungrateful. But that's what makes us children of God. So for me God is love as defined in Jesus. But it's that hard cross shape love. So it's not this kind of like, “Oh, I just decided to ‘spacey’ like I love” everybody's like daily work of loving the hard to love people in your life.
Seth Price 49:14
Yeah, thank you for that. So the book again, I'm gonna have it linked in the show notes people should buy it. Also green is my favorite color. And so the whole book cover is green. I find it I find it striking. Very few books are printed in green. I don't know why it's always red blue. Like it's just as I'm looking here, it's all red and blue. So I appreciate the green. But you blog at experimental theology…?
Richard 49:40
Google experimental theology will come up but I'm still like blogspot. So it's all it's the whole experimentaltheology.blogspot.com so I've never changed from that from the original one in 2007. I kind of said, here's a free way to start a blog and I never changed it.
Seth Price 49:56
Yeah, I want to poke at you a bit on something you wrote earlier. blogspot because I go there about once every three or four months and just kind of see what your what you're writing because you're all over the place. But you have an article in here and I've got it pulled up here saying an article a blog, saying it's the Gospel according to the Lord of the Rings, week seven, which I want to be clear about Dr Beck, I haven't read week one through six. You say the uselessness of Tom Bombadil and that's a Lord of the Rings character. But yeah, he's my favorite character like how could you? How can he be useless actually was really mad when he wasn't in the movie? I'm like, come on, man. This guy's literally better than an end. Anyway, I just really nerd it out there but what do you can I just what do you mean when you say the uselessness of Tom Bombadil, which has nothing to do with this book? But I've got Yeah and I'm curious?
Richard 50:43
First of all, it's good to write provocative things right? It’s good to kind of you know, to have a title up to like the Uselessness of Tom Bombadil and get people like “what‽” Yeah, you know. So there you go. So there's a little playful provocation in the title. But the point being made and I'm kind of using Fleming Rutledge (who) is a pastor and a writer that she has written a book about this and that's a phrase of hers.
And her entire point is that although Bombadil is a beloved character at the end of the day his kind of self contained world isn't going to be enough to withstand the shadow. And she contrasts kind of Bombadil with Rivendale. And so Rivendale is as idyllic as Bombadil’s right, the House of Elron is. But Rivendale knows there's a threat, Rivendale knows there needs to be a plan of action. So Rivendale represents resistance and Bombadil kind of represents a kind of idyllic turn inward.
This not to say that he's useless. Like somebody got on the blog and said, “Hey, Frodo would be dead if Tom didn't save him!”So I get all that, you know, they would have been dead they would have died in the, what is that old tree?
Seth Price 52:07
The Ents? I can't remember his name though.
Richard 52:10
They're in an old forest when he discovers them? Yeah, there's like an old tree that is going to eat them or something. But you know, so it's not saying he doesn't have any purpose, but the overall thing and so I'm just kind of making a metaphor for the church.
Seth Price 57:25
Yeah, that posture is…
Richard 57:27
Yes that posture of kind of like you’ve got to turn inward to kind of a cultivated space where we can you know, that is good, and there's a role for that. But at the end of the day, right, we got to get boots on the ground and kind of, you know. And so the title is just about kind of the two postures we can adopt in a world of spinning out of control.
We can just kind of turn into a little clique or clan, or we can kind of go “No, we’ve got to take action. So it's a contrast between Bombadil and Rivendale, it is a metaphor.
Seth Price 53:00
The title works well because as I was scrolling through I'm like, wait, what did he say! Lack of metaphors screw that I'm gonna read this. This is bull. This is bull. (Richard laughs) But anyway, so you got the blogspot. Where else would you direct people to that want to kind of dive into what you do?
Richard 53:18
That's it. That's the only online presence.
Seth Price 53:21
That’s easy. Thank you so much, again, for coming back Dr. Beck. I'll give you back your evening. And we'll both watch the roll call of whatever's happening with this (Democratic Primaries…I think South Carolina).
Richard 53:29
Yeah, yeah, I gotta go find out what's going on out.
Seth Price 53:32
Yeah, it should be fun. I’ll tell you. It's been blessed to not even care about it today because I just been doing other things. So thank you again, so much. I really appreciate it.
Richard 53:42
Yeah, it was a pleasure to talk to you sir.
Seth Price 53:58
As we wind the show to a close and I referenced it at the beginning but I really do hope that you're taking care of yourself in these pandemic times. I'm so thankful every single one of you. And if you need anything, I don't know what help I can be. But please reach out to me if you need just an ear as you're frustrated or anything, like reach out to me and I'm happy to give you my ear. Thank you to the Salt of The Sound for their music in this episode as I continue to work back through the transcripts, and the backlog of conversations that there are; if you haven't dived into those go to the website, find the transcripts, I love doing them. Actually, I take that back. I don't really love doing them. But I love what I learn when I do them as I really listen to conversations and I'm listening word for word as best I can. I'm finding so many things that I missed the first time. So I would encourage you to do the same.
Maybe become a Patreon supporter of the show. But then if you know people that would benefit from reading a conversation, that maybe can't engage in podcasts in the way that you can, share those transcripts with, let them know they're there. That'd be a big help.
Be safe, know that you're blessed and we will talk soon.