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FIRST RESPONSE:Bob Dylan’s Modern Times soars to the top of Billboard’s Chart: The Spiritual Journey |
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Written by Joe Randeen
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First Response
October 2006
Bob Dylan’s Modern Times soars to the top of Billboard’s Chart: The Spiritual Journey Continues
By Don Williams
Popular culture was shaken in 1979 with the news that Bob Dylan had become a “born-again” Christian. As Dylan said recently in a Rolling Stone interview, “I own the ‘60’s.” How could the voice of a generation with his Jewish roots and his acidic critique of everything come to faith in Jesus? The liberal press, including Rolling Stone itself, quickly dismissed his radical change. Perhaps he was having a psychic breakdown. Perhaps he was shaken by his recent divorce. Perhaps he was exploring gospel music as he had explored other genres. If everything is political, this must be Dylan’s latest political move. When Jan Wenner, the publisher of Rolling Stone, reviewed Dylan’s first Christian album (Slow Train Coming), he virtually missed the point, failing to see that the “Slow Train” was Jesus, “coming around the bend.” Dylan clearly drew the line in “You Gotta Serve Somebody.” “It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody.” For this effort, he received “Song of the Year” at the Grammy’s.
As time passed, Dylan’s lyrics were exegeted and his moves scrutinized. He was seen at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem with a yarmulke. He attended his son’s Bar-Mitzvah. He must have reverted to Judaism. But Dylan himself maintained discreet silence. After several “Christian” albums (“Saved”; “Shot of Love” “Empire Burlesque”) he announced that the time for telling people how to “get saved,” for him, had passed. This raised two questions. First was his conversion real? Second, does he still confess Christ (even if veiled) today?
A year before his conversion, Dylan was interviewed by Jonathan Cott in Rolling Stone. Cott asked him about doing new versions of his older songs. Dylan replied, “As I said before, the reason for the new versions is that I’ve changed. You meet new people in your life, you’re involved on different levels with people. Love is a force, so when a force comes in your life – and there’s love surrounding you – you can do anything.” Cott asked, “Is that what is happening to you now?” Dylan replied, “Something similar to that, yeah.” Later Cott returned to this theme, “I wanted to ask you about love.” Dylan answered, “Go ahead, but I’m not too qualified on that subject. Love comes from the Lord – it keeps all of us going. If you want it, you got it.” Near the end of the interview, Cott asked Dylan why he writes with so much complexity. Dylan, however, answered a broader question, “I wouldn’t be doing it unless some power higher than myself were guiding me on. I wouldn’t be here this long.” Later, in San Diego, someone threw a crucifix on the stage. Dylan recalled, “I looked down at that cross and I said, ‘I got to pick that up.’” Returning to San Diego the next year Dylan said to the audience, “If that person is here tonight, I want to thank you for that cross.”
It wasn’t until 1980 that Dylan talked to Robert Hilburn of The Los Angeles Times about his conversion. Hilburn reports that Dylan “accepted Christ in his heart in 1978, but was reluctant initially to tell his friends about it or put his experience into music.” Sitting in a hotel in San Francisco, Dylan told Hilburn:
“The funny thing is a lot of people think that Jesus comes into a person’s life only when they are either down or out or are miserable or just old and withering away. That’s not the way it was for me. I was doing fine. I had come a long way in just the year we were on the road. (1978) I was relatively content, but a very close friend of mine mentioned a couple of things to me and one of them was Jesus.
“Well, the whole idea of Jesus was foreign to me. I said to myself, ‘I can’t deal with that. Maybe later.’ But later it occurred to me that I trusted this person and I had nothing to do for the next couple of days so I called the person back and said I was willing to listen about Jesus.’” Dylan was then introduced to two pastors. He told Hilburn, “I was kind of skeptical, but I was also open. I certainly wasn’t cynical. I asked lots of questions, questions, like, ‘What’s the Son of God, what’s that all mean?’ and, “What does it mean – dying for my sins?’”
Dylan told Hilburn that he slowly began to accept that “Jesus is real and I wanted that…. I knew that He wasn’t going to come into my life and make it miserable, so one thing led to another…until I had this feeling, this vision and feeling.” Dylan reported that his room moved, “There was this presence in the room that couldn’t have been anyone but Jesus.”
In this moment of transformation, Dylan clearly found release. More than once he speaks of his tears. On Slow Train Coming it is Christ alone, “who can reduce me to tears.” (“When He Returns”). These are tears of repentance. But there are also tears that water hope: “In the time of my confession/ In the hour of my deepest need/ When the pool of tears beneath my feet/ Floods every new-born seed.” (“Every Grain of Sand” on Shot of Love).
All of this is by the sheer grace of God. It is Christ who has done it all for Dylan, and who now meets him in his deepest need. As he puts it in “What Can I Do For You,” “You have given everything to me/ What can I do for you? Pulled me out of bondage/ And You made me renewed inside/ Filled up the hunger/ That had always been denied. Opened up a door no man can shut/ And you opened it up so wide/ And you’ve chosen me to be among the few/ What can I do for you?” (on Saved)
“Modern Times” 2006
The debate is endless as to whether Dylan is still a Christian. As he often says, it is all in his songs. So what is reflected in his most recent album as it goes to the top of the charts? In the apocalyptic opener, “Thunder on the Mountain” Dylan sings, “Thunder on the Mountain [Like Mt. Sinai when Moses received the Law?] rolling to the ground/ Gonna get up in the morning walk the hard road down. Some sweet day [When Christ returns?] I’ll stand beside my king [Jesus]. I wouldn’t betray your love or any other thing.”
Dylan’s faith is the clearest in “Beyond the Horizon.” The horizon is this phenomenal world, what we see. But beyond the horizon is another world, the real world of eternity. There “life has only begun,” and it “is easy to love.”
Midnight is a metaphor for the end of this age when Christ returns. So Dylan writes, “Beyond the horizon, across the divide/ ‘Round about midnight, we’ll be on the same side.” He continues, “My wretched heart is pounding/ I felt an angel’s kiss [his conversion, Jesus in the room?]/ My memories are drowning [memories of past sin?] / In mortal bliss.”
Dylan continues that at the end of this life, he will be with his Lord, fully indentified with him: “Beyond the horizon/ at the end of the game/ Every step that you take./ I’m walking the same.” Church bells recall a melody “from many moons ago.” “The bells of St. Mary,/ how sweetly they chime/ Beyond the horizon/ I found you just in time.” While Dylan has been reduced to brokenness: “It’s dark and it’s dreary/ I’ve been pleading in vain [his protest era?]/ I’m wounded, I’m weary/ My repentance is plain.” And this repentance has brought him to grace: “Beyond the horizon/ o’r the treacherous sea/ I still can’t believe that you have set aside your love for me.” And this love is reciprocated and eternal: “Beyond the horizon, / the sky is so blue/ I’ve got more than a lifetime to live lovin’ you.”
Conclusion
During the Hilburn interview, Dylan spoke of a period of quiet after his conversion: “I truly had a born-again experience, it you want to call it that. It’s an over-used term, but it’s something people can relate to…. I always knew there was a God or a creator of the universe…but I wasn’t conscious of Jesus and what that had to do with the supreme creator.” Dylan continued, “Most of the people I know don’t believe that Jesus was resurrected, that He is alive. It’s like He was just another prophet or something, one of many good people. That’s not the way it was any longer for me. I had always read the Bible, but only looked at it as literature. I was never really instructed in it in a way that was meaningful to me.”
Hilburn asked if Dylan began to share his faith. He replied, “No, I didn’t want to reflect on the Lord at all because if I told people and then I didn’t keep going, they’d say, ‘Oh, well, I guess it was just another one of those things that didn’t work out.’ I didn’t know myself if I could go for three months. But I did begin telling a few people after a couple of months and a lot of them got angry with me.” Did this give Dylan second thoughts? “No, by that time I was into it. When I believe in something, I don’t care what anybody else thinks.” Listen closely to Modern Times. Nothing has changed!
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First Response 
