Truth in Rock

Someone from church asked me to write something for a devotional they plan to distribute this fall. I doubt they'll ask again:

If all truth is God’s truth, we shouldn’t startle or wince when we find it written on the subway walls and tenement halls. We should celebrate rather than scold our Muslim mechanic or pagan plumber or communist co-worker who helps with homework, obeys the law, defers to others, works diligently, and “rejoices in the wife of his youth” (Proverbs 5:18) because he is following the way ordained by God when He created this world. The apostle Paul stated the obvious but troublesome truth that people who disavow God often do the right thing (Romans 2:14), and not as a blind pig finds a truffle but because “God’s divine nature has been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made” (Romans 1:20). Seek the truth and you will find it in some unlikely places, as I have – even under the rock in rock music.

In The Seeker, Pete Townshend sings “I got values but I don’t know how or why.” He may not admit it, but he shares a God-given conscience with you and me, and that raises a lot of questions for The Who, from the band’s name to “Who are you?” to “How can Tommy be saved when he doesn’t know who Jesus was or what praying is?” Some of the questions are hard, and sometimes the seeker, like the wealthy young man who went away sad (Matthew 19:22), can’t stand the answer, but we should encourage the seeker to ask, especially if he can swing a Stratocaster.

Emerson, Lake, & Palmer’s Lucky Man captures the hollowness of life lived without constraints, free of the values God ordained and the seeker sought. He had power, wealth, and “a gold-covered mattress on which he was led,” yet it’s clear from the lyrics and the music that “lucky” is an ironic adjective. “What a lucky man he was” captures the truth that the things we count for precious either burn out or rust (Matthew 6:19 and James 1:11). It reminds me of a modern lucky man, Ted Turner, who at the peak of his success described his life as “an empty bag.” Or of Jackson Browne’s Fountain of Sorrows, in which you hear “that hollow sound of your own steps in flight.”

Not all gold records yield nuggets of truth, even those that sound profound. (Procol Harum’s Whiter Shade of Pale, anyone?) When The Boss samples King James in Thunder Road – faith, crosses, praying, savior, redemption, heaven, Mary, and the promised land elevate his song about street racing – it’s probably just for effect, but affect us it does because we who were born in the USA have inherited the privileges as well as the baggage of Christendom. I count it a privilege that most of us are acquainted with the explicit truth of God thanks to Gutenberg’s Bible and the many Zondervans that followed. But I count as baggage our tendency to dismiss or even deride God’s truth when it falls outside the walls of the church.

Of course, you’ll find lies and half-truths in pop music, too. “All you need is love” is not as true as “the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). “Love the one you’re with” is a twisted take on Jesus’ command to “love one another” (John 13:34). And it’s no challenge to find songs that celebrate lies – Highway To Hell, Imagine, Only The Good Die Young – but even these can illumine God’s truth, if only from behind (see Matthew 7:13, 2 Peter 2:1, and Jeremiah 12:1 to see the shadow cast).

So love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:31). After all, she may be a lot closer to God’s way than I am, whether she knows it or not. Like Kitty in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, your neighbor may be “unconsciously religious, and good.” And by speaking the truth in love, you earn the right to show your neighbor that the truths you share are from God.


by Matt Huff – I grew up in a bedroom community of New York City, with Cousin Brucie of WABC on the transistor radio under my pillow, and the Gospel according to Saint Matthew on the nightstand. I was named after one of Christendom’s bright lights, a trait I share with many rock stars – Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Peter Paul & Mary, Elton John, and John “more popular than Jesus” Lennon, (compare to his namesake’s claim in Mark 1:7 that “After me will come one whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie”).