Monday Morning Music Ministry

9-9-24

“Something is happening in our world, and I want to be part of it!”

My friend said that to me as we recently discussed current events (“current” as in “high voltage”), and she took the words from my mouth, as it were. Our common point of view is not unalloyed, and I wonder how many readers agree. That is, some things are happening – many things are changing – and few of them are to our liking… but. We want to, we need to, be part of understanding them, resisting many of them, and rescuing our society. We can make things happen too.

Redeem our culture, that is. Protect our families. Defend our faith.

This will not be a political column. As politics have invaded every sphere of life these days, however, we must contend when necessary. Goliath challenged King Saul for 40 days until David stepped up. He recognized that the Philistines were a threat; he accepted that giants were real; and he acted. Neither politeness nor cowardice nor prudence nor excuses nor pride were availed: it was time to act.

Some things are happening in our world. I will list a few. Join me on a 30,000-feet view.

For all of Western civilization’s “progress,” a lot of our intelligence is artificial. I am turning that phrase around, to mean that myriad assumptions are swindles, despite our smug arrogance. After generations of societal life in many places and varied conditions, we believe that our world has evolved to a place where families are no longer sacred foundation-stones; where men and women do not have essential characteristics and functions; where faith must not play a vital role in peoples’ lives; where respect, sexual fidelity, and civility are irrelevancies; where traditions are not valuable tools for moving forward.

This nonsense is palpable, and dangerous. When we review history – which is a taskmaster, not merely a teacher; certainly not a gentle persuader – we see that every civilization that has veered toward these heresies has perished. Often in ugly and brutal fashion. Seldom has a culture chosen to embrace these suicidal tendencies as lustily as ours is doing.

Some other things are happening in our world. As I assured you, I am not getting political, but I will list some facts – largely obscure at the moment, even from a 30,000-foot overview.

Quietly but quickly there are changes afoot. They might be harbingers of a revolution of redemption; or they might be blips on the screen of the cultural decline; or they might be death throes of a world doomed to join past civilizations on the trash-heap of history.

In the major Western nations there are extreme shake-ups in politics (unavoidable to mention, except as “politics” represents many aspects within societies). During the US elections, former Democrats named Trump and Kennedy and Musk and Gabbard now control the Republican Party, or at least the presidential campaign. The Blue-Collar Billionaire and his new allies (and supporters) largely have embraced an agenda that embraces Christian values and conservative priorities.

In the United Kingdom, a four-month-old party named Reform garnered almost as many votes as the victorious Labor Party in recent Parliamentary elections. It is, like the new GOP, similarly small-government, low-tax, anti-immigrant in its focus. The rise of the National Front in France tells the same story. As the leaders of these parties have split from the mainstream and are political renegades, so does the popular leader of Hungary; he shares their platform views, and is a former ally (strongly former!) of George Soros.

In Germany, in recent days the rise of new parties – AfD (Alternative for Germany) and the months-old party of Sahra Wagenknecht – have captured almost half of the votes in two large states, Saxony and Thuringia. The new movements are in certain aspects right and left, respectively, yet they share general free-market, anti-censorship, foreign-policy views (including skepticism about Ukraine) that have observers foreseeing an eventual alliance.

“Horseshoe Politics,” it is being called – where right and left ultimately and nearly meet. New labels are applied – Protest; Populism; Common-Sense – but “Something is happening in our world, and we want to be part of it!”

What place is all this in a Christian essay, one that offers to “put a song in our hearts” to start our week? Well, nothing – if we think we are in fact doomed, too far down the tubes. I can be gloomier, by the way: I believe God has held His hand; that America and the West have rebelled and sinned to an extent that we deserve His severe judgment; that, searching End-Times prophecy, we discern no hint that there will be an America in the world’s last days…

Yet God has held His hand. We are called to repent, and not surrender. As we, individual sinners, may be redeemed, so can our nation find salvation. (I have learned this week that a new book, Write and Live His Answer Now, will reprint an essay I wrote challenging Christians not to plead for Revival, but rather to generate Revival.)

Regarding the political realignments I listed – is the Lord “shaking the nations”? Spiritual revival plays varied roles in all this turmoil, but… there are strange things happ’nin’ every day, as the old Spiritual goes. For instance, without assuming too much, the recent, and frequent, God-affirming testimonies of Robert F Kennedy Jr are surprising and encouraging.

Scripture tells us that especially in times like these we can’t feel at home in the world anymore. But something is happening in our world. We need to discern: maybe something new, and good. And we need to be a part of it!

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Click: This World Is Not My Home

10-31-22

I was planning to write a message about Reformation Day, but this has been a week with many distracting events, some sad; and thoughts about reforming the church, confronting corruption, does not need an anniversary-day to assert its relevance. Next week.

Among the sad events of this week was the death of Jerry Lee Lewis.

Somewhat anticipated, even the subject of false rumors, Jerry had a stroke a couple of years ago and, with the lifestyle he led – often on death’s door; in some ways tempting death many times through the years – he was, in the words of one of his recent nicknames, the Last Man Standing.

That reference is to the class of talented Southern boys who burst on the American musical scene in the mid-1950s. They were all unique, with utterly distinct styles, yet their common roots and similar stories was a most astonishing coincidence. Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Charlie Rich, Roy Orbison… and others: all born in the mid-1930s; all dirt-poor Southerners; all of Pentecostal or Fundamentalist faiths; all attracted to, and amalgamating in their music, the traditions of country music, Gospel, white and black blues; all separately showing up on the doorstep of a small recording studio in Memphis, hoping to find an audience. Remarkable.

When I was a kid and rock ‘n’ roll was young too, it was Jerry Lee Lewis who caught my ear, so to speak, and I never looked back. Through the years I interviewed him maybe a dozen times; traveled over half the continent to attend concerts and see him backstage; and eventually met, and became friends with, some of his relatives – cousin Mickey Gilley; sister Linda Gail Lewis; other cousins like Rev David Beatty; band members like Ken Lovelace; associates like Jack Clement.

In his hometown of Ferriday, Louisiana, I worshiped in the Assembly of God Church where the cousins grew up; and spent time with Jerry and Linda’s colorful other sister Frankie Jean. I became a follower of Jimmy Swaggart, I suppose first hooked by the “bait” of the music, and have worshiped and interviewed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, too. Closing the circle, I interviewed Mickey and other Gilleys, too.

I am in the process of putting all those meetings and interviews to work, and to share with the world a book that will profile them, principally Jimmy Lee and Jerry Lee – why I am putting aside thoughts on Martin Luther’s Reformation five-hundred years ago.

In a sense, however, there is a connection. The rediscovery of Bible-based belief and worship that Luther promoted has its current manifestation in Fundamentalist and Pentecostal churches. Of course many people will think this is unlikely – an affinity between nascent Protestantism of the 1500s, and the subsequent majesty of the Baroque master Bach; and the perfervid preaching in white-frame rural churches and the back-beat, three-chord exuberant music of Southern Gospel. But, Amen – so be it. The scarlet thread of redemption is actually a ribbon of many threads.

My book has found a theme beyond the blood relations (a gene pool the size of a teardrop) and family tree (more like a tangled vine!), and it can be found in the title: “Cousins – The Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings of a Remarkable American Family.” For, besides the abnormal, almost miraculous, musical talent and astonishing piano stylings that the Cousins possess, there is the common element of Pentecostalism.

Music and Christian salvation rescued and redeemed the branches of that family and many similar families in that region and that time. Of course the Pentecostal experience is as old as the Days of the Apostles, but has only reasserted itself in the past century. Now it is a worldwide phenomenon – to choose one proof, the number of Pentecostals in Brazil today is more than the Catholic population.

In Jerry Lee’s case, the preaching and music were part of his life. He attended Bible College in Texas until he was invited to leave because he would not (or could not, he told me) stop “juking” traditional Gospel songs like “My God Is Real.” Pastor Charles Wigley was a fellow student, playing sax in a little pickup band, and he told me that Jerry occasionally snuck out at night to listen to music at clubs in Dallas’s Deep Elem neighborhoods.

Jerry Lee’s virtually instant stardom when Sun Records heard his demos propelled him to what the public has known since then – TV appearances; multiple wives including one to his 13-year-old cousin; ups and downs; scandals; problems with drink, drugs, and taxes; movies and worldwide tours; and so forth. His cousins had somewhat similar experiences.

Yet all of the family, from the most casual church-goer to the world-famous evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, never rejected the “Sunday morning” component, no matter how many “Saturday nights” there were. You will understand the symbology.

The world might scorn (sometimes correctly) the repeated confessions of some folks; repentance, pleas for forgiveness, embracing the cross. Again and maybe again. But, we are all sinners. Some of us sin more loudly, or more colorfully, even more persistently, than others. But woe be to those who judge.

Many who sin never do desire to repent. Or never – God help them – feel the need for forgiveness; never really are conscious of their sin. Never knew, in the first place, a God who sees them and loves them and judges but has already provided a means of redemption in the cross – the shed blood of His Son.

Putting aside the massive talent and compelling music of Jerry Lee Lewis, his life on earth, now ended, can be seen as one hewing to the Gospel nevertheless, wracked with sin-consciousness when he strayed, having hundreds of conversations about his guilt; reforming, pledging, backsliding, interrupting some concerts to switch to Gospel music – working out his inner conflicts in public.

When he was training to be a preacher, he told me, a favorite theme was “the devil’s tail sticking out of houses” – when people had television antennas on their roofs. Ironic that his cousin Jimmy Lee Swaggart based a major portion of his ministry on televangelism. Ironic, too – or appropriate – that at the end of his life Jerry (once again… but clearly sincere) gave his heart to Jesus. Cousin Mickey Gilley did so, too, before his recent death. “Made things right with the Lord,” they each said.

Jerry Lee Lewis’s last recording project was a duet album with Jimmy Swaggart – long discussed over the years, but never produced. Traditional hymns and Gospel songs, it was released only months ago.

The world already is realizing that Jerry Lee was far greater than memorable hits and scandals and tabloid rumors. Even last month, before his death but after decades of snubs, the Country Music Hall of Fame finally elected him to its list of honorees.

Now he will be transformed from a popular personality to the true, exceptional icon he always was despite himself. His real story, as with many great figures in history, has come a full circle.

I pray that we can all have personal counterparts in our “walks,” and I don’t mean music or a particular lifestyle. Jerry Lee Lewis was taught the Truth of the Bible by his mother Mamie and Aunt Rene and in the First Assembly of God Church. He “hid the Word in his heart.” When he strayed he listened to the Holy Spirit, was troubled, and sought forgiveness. He shared his struggle with the world. In the end, it was not his new plaque in the Hall of Fame, but the old pew where he once sat, learning about Jesus and singing the songs of amazing grace, that was his real home. And where he was fulfilled.

“His” versions of those Gospel songs have prevailed after all. Whether there is a little more shaking going on in Heaven, we’ll understand it all by and by…

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Click Video Clip: In the Garden

Click Video Clip: Jesus, Hold My Hand