P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

BUSTED IN FOLSOM PRISON

Is it tough to admit that we’ve been overcome? That we’ve failed in standing up to the shouts of peer pressure or our own weak characters? We’re borrowing a tragic line this week from the Friday morning where a ruler named Pontius Pilate tried to set Jesus free. He knew this quiet young Prophet was innocent, that He didn’t deserve to die on a cross. But the crowd was loud in its insistence: “Let Him be crucified! Let Him be crucified!” Then the Bible cryptically records the fall: “And their shouts prevailed.”

It’s oh so true that temptations can be tough, and admitting we’ve succumbed to them is equally unpleasant. A young lady named Lucy is facing her own failures one day. Mom has just issued a stern disciplinary announcement, and now this young rebel is literally pounding her fist against the the living room floor. “You promised me a birthday party, and now you say I can’t have one! It’s not fair!” Well, a gifted theologian named Linus Van Pelt walks into the room and seeks to give his big sister some spiritual counsel. “You’re not using the right strategy,” he informs her as he hands Lucy a church bulletin and instructs the church organist to begin playing “I Surrender All.” Well, that part’s not in there, but cartoonist Charles Schultz does play this scene delightfully as little Linus proceeds to tell Lucy that a dose of Christian humility might go a long way. “The more you fuss, the worse off you’ll be. Why not admit it was all your own fault? Why not go up to Mom and say to her: ‘I’m sorry, dear Mother, I admit I’ve been bad, and you were right to cancel my party. From now on, I shall try to be good.’”

Friend, isn’t that a beautiful speech? Would that our young people would take that self-denying tone with us all the time, what do you say? Just as WE always did on the rare occasions when we were wrong as kids. Right? And Linus sagely concludes: “That’s much better than ranting and raving. All that does is prove her point.”

Well, the stubborn Lucy has to think about this. It’s going to take some fasting and prayer before words like those come out of her mouth. And it doesn’t help that she’s getting this counsel from her twerp kid brother. But with a sigh she begins to rehearse her mea culpa: “I’m sorry, dear Mother, I admit I’ve been bad.” The words are really sticking in her throat, but she gamely continues. “You were right to cancel my party. From now on, I shall try to be good.” Having gotten the speech down, she heads up the hallway, looking for Mom and the confessional booth. In the next-to-last frame in the cartoon strip, she stops and looks into the camera. Can she possibly do this? And the curtain falls as she howls to an unsympathetic world: “I’D RATHER DIE!!”

It’s an awful double whammy, isn’t it? First of all, Lucifer is an overwhelming enemy. He’s smart; he’s determined; he’s certainly experienced, and he’s got us outnumbered. But secondly, for us to ADMIT that he’s stronger, that he’s got our number . . . well, our desire to not do THAT is equally compelling.

The world recently mourned when a global friend dressed all in black finally passed to his rest. Back in 1955, a poor country kid named Cash wanted to audition for Sam Phillips, hoping to cut an album for Sun Records. “I’m a gospel singer,” he told the legendary media mogul. “Sorry, kid,” the businessman responded. “You know, I love gospel music. But unless you’re Mahalia Jackson, or somebody that established, you can’t even cover the cost of the recording.”

Well, it’s deliciously ironic to note – as writer Ted Olsen did in a great obituary for Christianity Today – that within 14 years Johnny Cash was “the best-selling artist alive, outperforming even the Beatles.” Even at the height of his career, though, the execs on the 23rd floor kept pushing him to stay away from religious lyrics. “My record company would rather I’d be in prison than in church,” he sighed once. They cringed when he wrote and recorded songs like “Redemption.”

The blood gave life to the branches of the tree / And the blood was the price that set the captives free / And the numbers that came through the fire and flood / Clung to the tree and were redeemed by the blood.

But as many of you, I’m sure, know, Mr. Johnny Cash was a man who often faced the combined shouts of a very determined Prince of Darkness and his fallen angels. Satan hit the pop singer hard, and he hit him regularly. Alcohol. Depression. Drugs.

“I could invite them in,” he once said to a magazine reporter. “The sex demon, the drug demon. But I don’t. They’re very sinister. You got to watch ‘em. They’ll sneak up on you. All of a sudden there’ll be a beautiful little Percodan laying there, and you’ll want it.”

Even though he was a Christian, and had been since he was 12, he told Rolling Stone magazine, in a year 2000 interview, that he just about committed suicide once. Lucifer was pounding on him that hard.

“To put myself in such a low state [with drugs],” he confessed, “that I couldn’t communicate with God, there’s no lonelier place to be. I was separated from God, and I wasn’t even trying to call on Him. I knew that there was no line of communication. There was nothing left of me. I had drifted so far away from God and every stabilizing force in my life that I felt there was no hope. [I] decided to crawl into Nickanack Cave on the Tennessee River, get lost and die. The absolute lack of light was appropriate. My separation from Him, the deepest and most ravaging of the various kinds of loneliness I’d felt over the years, seemed finally complete.” Then he quietly adds: “It wasn’t. I thought I’d left Him, but He hadn’t left me.”

And you know, the Word of God goes out of its way to encourage us, from both Testaments, that:

“Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

That’s Hebrews 13:5, quoting back from Deuteronomy 31:6. All through Johnny Cash’s magnificent but troubled career, the ups and the downs, the moments of straying and then the tearful returns, the amphetamine binges and then the free charity concerts he would do to make up for the announced dates he had skipped, he acknowledged that he was a sorry sinner saved only by grace.

“There is a spiritual side to me,” he told that same Rolling Stone reporter, “that goes real deep, but I confess right up front that I’m the biggest sinner of them all.”

Interestingly, that line is so close to the Apostle Paul’s “chief of sinners” self-description, that Johnny Cash once penned a novel about Paul, entitled – get this – The Man in WHITE.

We kind of lamented yesterday that we often lose these wars with Lucifer, even though it says in the book of James:

“Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” The Message paraphrase cheerfully opines: “Yell a loud no to the Devil and watch him scamper.”

And we might join the late Johnny Cash in complaining, “No, he doesn’t either! He doesn’t scamper at all; he just stands his ground and laughs at me!” But friend, have we really said a loud “no” to him, loud enough for him to hear, and our guardian angel too? And let’s also join Johnny Cash in obeying the first half of this verse:

“Submit yourselves therefore to God.” In that same Message paraphrase: “So let God work HIS will in you. . . . Say a quiet yes to God” – after that loud NO to the enemy – “and [God’ll] be there in no time.” And this is a good P.S. to it all: “Quit dabbling in sin. Purify your inner life. Quit playing the field. Hit bottom, and cry your eyes out. The fun and games are over. Get serious, really serious. Get down on your knees before the Master; it’s the only way you’ll get on your feet.”

If one word best describes the musical and spiritual career of the Man in Black, it might well be “checkered.” Times of prosperity, and then the dark moments when the hits dried up along with the sobriety. Then a return to God’s will and the arms of a faithful Christian wife named June Carter. But you know, even in the throes of his failures, the times when he knew he had failed his heavenly Father, Johnny Cash remembered that God still WAS his Father. He could still pray. He could still “submit.” He could come home, and know there still WAS a home. This wouldn’t be a day to nitpick about resurrection theology, because I kind of like it when Ted Olsen finishes the Christianity Today obituary by reverently observing:

“Now, on the other side of the river, the Man in Black wears glorious white . . . face-to-face with his Lord.”

Friend, I grieve over the times Satan defeats me, and I know you do too. But those battle encounters, bloody as they may be, are temporary. One day Lucifer and his will all be gone. And all of our attempts to pick ourselves back up and obey are bathed in the reality that God still loves us, and that someday we, too, will be wearing white and standing forever in His presence. That’s why we obey, and say to the Lord:

Because You’re mine, I walk the line.