Johnny Cash, Disciple of Christ

Matt Barber today has a great post over at Townhall.com entitled Johnny Cash, the Unsung Disciple. Go read the whole thing. I'll wait.

Have you read it?  Good.

The story of Johnny Cash's conversion rings true to me. I too have wandered in such a wilderness, and being the slow learner that I am, it took a long time to cry out to God.  But I did, and He answered. Like Cash, I view the Bible as the inspired, inerrant Word of God.  Note that I did not say literal, for the Bible speaks to us through many modes of human expression, and is not meant to be literal, but it is the Truth.

So was Cash a Christian "fundamentalist"? It would seem so. He once wrote, "Please understand that I believe the Bible, the whole Bible, to be the infallible, indisputable Word of God. I have been careful to take no liberties with the timeless Word."

Also, like Cash, I view myself as a Christian, plain and simple, though I worship with the Lutherans.

In his 2003 book, "The Man Comes Around: The Spiritual Journey of Johnny Cash," author and music critic Dave Urbanski wrote, "A writer once tried to paint Cash into a corner, baiting him to acknowledge a single denominational persuasion at the center of his heart. Finally, Cash laid down the law: 'I – as a believer that Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew, the Christ of the Greeks, was the Anointed One of God (born of the seed of David, upon faith as Abraham has faith, and it was accounted to him for righteousness) – am grafted onto the true vine, and am one of the heirs of God's covenant with Israel.'

"'What?' the writer replied. 

"'I'm a Christian,' Cash shot back. 'Don't put me in another box.'"

Because I view myself as a Christian, I pray each day for the persecuted Christians around the world, and I pray that God will turn the hearts of all Muslims to him, that every knee will bend, and every head will bow. I don't really care which dogma they follow, for dogmas are just ways to capture what we have learned and transmit it on. But God is always bigger than we can imagine.  He can find and heal a sinner like Johnny Cash, and he can find and heal a sinner like me.