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"It wasn't. I thought I'd left Him, but He hadn't left me. I felt something very powerful start to happen to me, a sensation of utter peace, clarity, and sobriety…Then my mind started focusing on God. He didn't speak to me—He never has, and I'll be surprised if He ever does—but ... I became conscious of a very clear, simple idea: I was not in charge of my own destiny. I was not in charge of my own death."

He found his way out of the cave, determined to get clean and sober. He made a good start, and he's been honest about the slips and relapses along the way—and not just with drugs. "They just kind of hold their distance," he told Rolling Stone. "I could invite them in: 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."

The connection with God makes it all worth it, he said: "The greatest joy of my life was that I no longer felt separated from Him. Now he is my Counselor, my Rock of Ages to stand upon."

Cash, many obituaries suggested, seemed obsessed with death. It was something he denied. "I am not obsessed with death; I'm obsessed with living," he said in 1994. "The battle against the dark one and the clinging to the right one is what my life is about."

Living, he knew, was death to self. His favorite verse, he often said, was Romans 8:13: "For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live."

A paradox? Not to Cash, who encountered death shortly before accepting an altar call. His brother Jack, two years his senior, fell on a table saw, cut from ribs to groin. "Mama, don't cry over me," he said, as Johnny and the rest of the family stood by. "I was going down a river, and there was a fire on one side and heaven on the other. I was crying, 'God, I'm supposed to go to heaven. Don't you remember? Don't take me to the fire.' All of a sudden, I turned, and now, mama, can you hear the angels singing?"

She said that she couldn't, and Jack squeezed her hand.

"Oh, mama, I wish you could hear the angels singing," he said, and died.

Like Christ, Cash felt no shame or theological dissonance at crying in the face of death. But make no mistake: he never forgot the joy waiting on the other side. Now, on the other side of the river, the Man in Black wears glorious white, reunited with his brother and face-to-face with his Lord.

Later this year, it has been reported, American Recordings will release a CD boxed set, with as many as 100 outtakes of Cash's work with Rubin over the last decade. Among the CDs will be Redemption Songs and the long-delayed Songs from My Mother's Hymn Book. Surely in the other albums there will be tunes of death and sin. Taken as a whole, it will be unmistakable that Cash was correct from his first day at Sun Records: He really was a singer of the gospel.

Ted Olsen is online managing editor for Christianity Today.

Copyright © 2003 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Cash's official site, JohnnyCash.com, offers photos, music clips, a discography, a forum board, and many other items.

American Recordings' official Johnny Cash site, JohnnyCashMusic.com, is good for news and links, including reams of obituaries.

CMT has a tribute video.

Cash's "Hurt" video is available in both RealVideo and Windows Media (high bandwidth | low bandwidth) formats.

Steve Beard, who wrote about Cash's Christianity for the book Spiritual Journeys, also compiled several obituaries and tributes.

Rolling Stone has published some excellent articles on Cash over the years.

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November 2003, Vol. 47, No. 11