Refiner’s Fire: Bob Dylan Finds His Source

A call into the bars, into the streets, into the world, to repentance.

There is little need to recount Scripture or to specify chapter and verse to substantiate the proposition that “Slow Train” is a Christian album. And while there may be inquiries about the surety of his commitment. “Slow Train” is testimony to Bob Dylan’s completion into the Christian faith.

“Slow Train Coming” is more than a testimony to Bob Dylan’s completion into the Christian faith: it is a call into the bars, into the streets, into the world, to repentance, to “the man on the cross … crucified for you. Believe in his power, that’s about all you’ve got to do!” Bob, Jerry Wexler, and Barry Beckett have taken outreach and made it happen in the raw musical vernacular of the roadhouse.

Bob Dylan’s credentials are impeccable. Who continually encouraged us to find the truth for ourselves, “Not to follow leaders” (not even himself, in “It Ain’t Me, Babe”)? Who suspected the status quo, the cool, the compromising (“Don’t know which is worse, doin’ your own thing or just bein’ cool”)? Who warned the complacent that the “times are a changing,” or cried for the realization of a mutual hope “blowin’ in the wind”? Who painfully reexamined his talents and asked, “For whom does this prosper?” so that we might be strengthened in our own hope/thirst for righteousness?

Not only as edification for the body, “Gotta Serve Somebody” must touch any listener just because it identifies so many of us: our jobs, our traits, our likes, our dislikes. How clearly in this context do we begin to see the single choice available at the bottom line: you cannot serve two masters.

As the blind lead the blind, the political activist has misread the reference to sheiks controlling America’s power in “Slow Train” as a conservative political posture; it is, in fact, an accurate portrayal of the larger picture of world greed and man’s subsequent dependence upon its luxuries and niceties as though they were life itself. Remember the line from Pogo: “We have met the enemy and he is us”? This is the ultimate war—the extension of our own battle for control in a situation that has been given to us. A man named Adam and a woman named Eve ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and at once became “self-conscious,” and hid from God. That seed of discontent and guilt has been passed down through the centuries and extruded through into defensive postures that bear no relation to turning the other cheek.

Juxtaposing seemingly unrelated characters and situations. Bob historically has spoken to us of a larger pursuit—a game bigger than local politics or the one-night stand. His John Wesley Harding album marked an adventurous step into the spiritual realm. And most Dylan officianadoes are agreed that “My Back Pages” was the most revealing track from “Another Side of Bob Dylan.” It prophesied his dissatisfaction with himself and with goals that suddenly seemed too obvious and short-sighted. His search wound its way through his albums with occasional discoveries—like love, as revealed in a personal relationship.

I’m sure some of the thinking behind the request for me to write about Bob Dylan’s new album. “Slow Train Coming,” was the assumption that because Bob and I shared the same times we must have shared the same space. Therefore, to provide the perspective in which to discuss this record, I must recount the Dylan-Stookey “relationship.”

I met Bob in Greenwich Village in 1960, when he sang at the Gaslight, a coffee house (remember those?). His impact on me was considerable: the first night he was a singer of traditional ballads; the second night he was an innovator, using the folk idiom to speak in parables. Following his performance that second night, I asked him if he had heard of the counterfeit ticket scam that resulted in the sinking of the Bear Mountain Picnic vessel, when holders of all tickets (real or fake) boarded the ship, heedless of its capacity. The next night he returned with “Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues.”

We had sporadic contact from 1961 to 1967. There was the Newport Folk Festival, where Bob’s electric presentation was welcomed by a crowd thirsty for the perception and content in his music.

Then Woodstock, 1967: I’m looking for truth; Bob is recovering from a motorcycle accident. He graciously allows a friend and me into the house to ask questions of the universe. He is totally honest with me, kind—and suggests I do some Bible reading. Thanks, Bob.

1968, Dylan’s movie time: I’m a seeker in monk’s clothing, cavorting with Tiny Tim and Howard Alk and a winterscape. I end up on the cutting room floor.

Again 1968: Bob returns from the Holy Land: there is excitement in his voice. He has slides. I have slides. We have families. Some maybes are exchanged.

1974. I’ve moved to Maine. Bob passes through with the Rolling Thunder Review, close enough to attend. I don’t.

People speak of the “Dylan enigma”; I see growth. The “basement tapes” are so scriptural I can’t believe that everyone doesn’t know who the Mighty Quinn is or in which “book” too much of nothing transpires.

1979. I hear a rumor: Dylan’s a Christian. I hear of a personal encounter that speaks so eloquently of a changed heart I know the rumor must be true. I hear “Slow Train.”

NOEL PAUL STOOKEY

Scriptural references were commonplace in Dylan songs, mostly Old Testament images. The allusions were rather strong, and there was no denying the power and authority of lines like “the first will be last,” in “The Times They Are A’Changing.”

Our Father is leading this musician into areas that are unreachable by the pastel-suited, bouffant-haired, highly stylized “gospel singer.” No one can fully recognize the diversity of gifts or talents within the body of Christ. Bob’s new album is a special success: not only for him personally, as God will contrive to work through him as a person; but also musically, as it reaches for the shadows. It beseeches a decision from the hardest hearted, the one who is hardest to find, the outlaw—that one who never committed himself for fear of being hurt. It is an inspiration to all brothers and sisters. Remain in your station.

NOEL PAUL STOOKEY

Musician Noel Paul Stookey heads Neworld, a recording and animation studio in South Blue Hill, Maine. He is best known as Paul of Peter, Paul, and Mary, whose personal spiritual odyssey was described in CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s issue of May 19, 1978.

Not Buying into the Subculture

Yes, it’s true. Singer and songwriter Bob Dylan is professing Jesus Christ as Lord. He is doing it quietly through his new album, “Slow Train Coming.” Like most of what he does publicly, he is keeping the message foremost, disdaining the subculture’s cult of conquered heroes and forsaking the notoriety of the born-again “club.” He remains true to the prophetic posture that has earned him the respect and attention of his peers in the popular music arena.

Many of the songs he has written were made popular through the musical talents of others (for example, Stookey notes the significance of Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” but it was Stookey’s own group, Peter, Paul, and Mary, that propelled that ballad into the ratings).

It is the sage-like message of Dylan’s lyrics, the thoughtful, conscious, driven critiques of shallow dehumanizing vogues and bandwagon motifs to which victims and victimizers alike have responded. Dylan’s uncompromised sensitivity and courage leave him free to name the self-debasing methods with which Americans have dulled their collective consciences in pursuit of prosperity, power, and the materialistic version of the “American dream.”

But before “Slow Train Coming,” no roots anchored his apocalyptic appraisals of the answers. Dylan could clearly see the light and the human nakedness illuminated by that light, but he was either unable or unwilling to acknowledge its source. While he sang of the rampant frivolity and foolishness of human endeavors, his songs still sought for meaning.

In “Slow Train Coming” that quest has been satisfied. Rolling Stone magazine, not wanting to disown Dylan, labeled the album “artistically ambiguous,” apparently ignoring stanzas like “There’s a man on a cross and he they crucified for you. / Believe in his power, that’s about all you’ve got to do.” And, to make it personal, he sings, “What you’ve given me today is worth more than I can pay / And no matter what they say, I believe in you.”

The album begins with the only alternatives open to each of us, reciting a litany of personality types and professions set with the refrain, “Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” In the album’s love song he reiterates, “Now this spiritual warfare, flesh and blood breakin’ down, / You either got faith or you got unbelief and there ain’t no neutral ground.” Dylan takes clear cues from Scripture about Satan’s active involvement in our depravity: “The enemy is subtle, how be it we’re deceived / When the truth is in our hearts and we still don’t believe. / Shine your light, shine your light on me. / You know I just can’t make it by myself, I’m a little too blind to see.”

Throughout the record there runs a theme of “Gonna change my way of thinkin’, bring myself a different set of rules, / Gonna put my best foot forward and stop bein’ influenced by fools.” He identifies the fools as “my so-called friends” who “have fallen under a spell, / They look me squarely in the eye and they say, well, all is well.”

The title song previews the coming judgment. “Can’t help but wonder what’s happening to my companions, are they lost or are they found? / Are there earthly principles they are goin’ to have to abandon?” He then alludes to Revelation 9:6: “Can they imagine the dark ages that will fall from on high / When men will beg God to kill them and they won’t be able to die.” “Slow Train Coming” is not only about the end times, nor does it only point to personal judgment; God’s judgment and man’s sin are keyed to current conditions. “All that foreign oil controlling American soil,” and, “Sheiks walkin’ around like kings … deciding America’s future from Amsterdam and Paris … people starving’ and thirstin’, grain elevators are burstin’ ”

Perhaps the most refreshing quality of this, Dylan’s first postconversion album, is that he has not bought into the Christian subculture’s status quo. His gift to us remains his once-removed prophetic insight. He is able to see the sticky sweet personalization puffery of some segments of American Christianity: “Spiritual advisers and gurus to guide your every mood. / Instant inner peace in every step you take, got to be a prude … / Do you ever wonder just what God requires? / You think he’s just an errand boy to satisfy your wandering desires” is sung in the context of “adulterers in churches, pornography in schools, / You got gangsters in power and lawbreakers makin’ rules. / When you gonna wake up? When you gonna wake up? / Strengthen the things that remain.”

Dylan has packed the album with a plethora of human foibles and fantasies, all cloaked in the latest societal garb (there is at least one with which each of us can identify) and exposed in the searing light of biblical metaphor. He at once shows us who we are and calls us to “the man who died a criminal’s death.”

The voice and especially the music are in the best Dylan style. But they are only the vehicles to carry a message that goes beyond the searching of an earlier quest for the source of all answers.

DAVID SINGER

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