We cannot control when we are born in history. But that doesn’t stop us from wondering, “How would my life have been different had I been born in the time of Joan of Arc, Sojourner Truth or Susan B. Antony or in the time of Jesus, Moses, Muhammad or the Buddha?”
In centuries to come, people will try to imagine living in our time in history. They will wonder what it was like to experience the Civil Rights movement, to see astronauts walking on the moon or to watch the Berlin Wall come down.
Quite recently, I have been grateful that I have lived in the same era as one individual in particular. Bob Dylan. I was a junior in high school when my best friend brought one of Dylan’s first albums to our youth group at church. It was the first time I’d heard Dylan, and the song I most remember from that album is “The Ballad of Hattie Carroll,” a lament about the tragic and needless death of a black maid in Maryland at the hands of her drunken white boss, who because of his position in society wasn’t charged with the crime.
I left youth group that night a different person, a high school student beginning to wake up to the need for social and racial justice in our country.
One Internet site states that Dylan has written about 260 songs, but I consider that a low estimate. Of greater interest to me than the number of songs he’s written are those songs that are in what I call my “Bob Dylan Hymnbook.” These are Dylan’s songs that have spiritual power, songs that challenge me to be a better person, songs that never stop putting a lump in my throat.
There are too many of these to mention, going all the way back to “Blowing in the Wind” and “Masters of War.” But in the past few weeks, I have been drawn to hear once again, and then again and again, two lesser known Dylan ballads: “What Good Am I?” and “The Disease of Conceit.”
If the Day of Judgment comes with a soundtrack, I expect to hear “What Good Am I?” being sung by angelic choirs.
What good am if I’m like all the rest
If I just turn away when I see how you’re dressed
If I shut myself off so I can’t hear you cry
What good am I ?
What good am I if I know and don’t do
If I see and don’t say, if I look right through you
If I turn a deaf ear to the thunderin’ sky
What good am I ?
The other ballad affects me differently. Occasionally, as a professor of Biblical studies, I’m asked if anyone still believes in original sin. I can offer no better answer than to invite the questioner to listen to “The Disease of Conceit” and then deny its universal human truth.
There’s a whole lot of hearts breaking tonight from the disease of conceit
Whole lot of hearts shaking tonight from the disease of conceit
Steps into your room eats into your soul
Over your senses you have no control
Ain’t nothing too discreet about the disease of conceit.
There’s a whole lot of people dying tonight from the disease of conceit
Whole lot of people crying tonight from the disease of conceit
Comes right out of nowhere and you’re down for the count
From the outside world the pressure will mount
Turn you into a piece of meat
The disease of conceit.
I was thrilled when Bob Dylan recently received the Nobel Prize in Literature. But I think it’s time to also bestow on Dylan an honorary degree of Divinity. No, I am not saying Dylan is a god, but I do believe he has been a prophet for our time. And because of that, I live every day grateful that our lives have overlapped.
