It's Time to Talk about "Jesus"

I’m pretty sure that “Jesus” is the most entertaining song in my repertoire. It’s rowdy. It has pathos & humor. I playfully call it an “Appalachian gospel stomp.” And thankfully, it’s not as controversial as it seems. (Okay, maybe a little bit, depending…) I busted it out 10 years ago, somewhere in Southern California, at an L.A. showcase or a Songster-in-Round. But the idea was planted in my shifty brain a decade before that. (It often takes me years to complete a decent song.)

Somewhere around the turn-of-the-century, I came across some devotional art depicting Jesus the Savior as a tough, muscular, tattooed guy. He was a white dude (and I do mean “Dude!) He wore cut-off-sleeved T-shirts, drove a convertible muscle car, brandished firearms, and boxed. All the while sporting a gorgeous mullet hairstyle.

As an erstwhile amateur biblical scholar, I found this more than a little bit amusing. The phrase “a more in-your-face Jesus” popped into my head. Because, in those days, on the heels of the grungy-edged 90’s, everybody was touting a “more-in-your-face” everything. I decided to write a song with that title.

But a decade went by, and I had written not a word nor a note for this song. I realized why: A song of that title is not the kind of song I would write. I am not in the business of making fun of people’s sincerely held beliefs. (For some artists, there is a tempting shortcut to credibility in trying to make religious people look bad. I have always found this cheap and lazy. Not creative, not imaginative, and just as self-righteous as the people you’re sending up. Granted, there’s a lot of unbecoming stuff worth critiquing over there in Churchland. But if you can’t do it without taking into account real-life human beings who live there, you ain’t worth your salt as an artist. A foundation of humanity & affection is required, even in satire. And, sure, I get that the activist-artist’s job is to “comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.” But who, exactly, is “comfortable?” Not the majority of Christians have met. Most of them are just trying to make it through their complicated lives like the rest of us.)

As soon as I dropped the clever, bullshit cheeky catch phrase in my title, the whole song came to me like Saul being struck blind.

In fairness to the “Tough-Guy-Jesus” portrait artists in question, I understand what they’re trying to do. They depict a cool hero uncle-figure, motivated by protectiveness, Who sticks up for us ordinary folks during the hard times. (The whole “footprints in the sand” thing, only with Croc shoe prints.) However, I confess to having pivoted to something entirely different, for effect. Something quite unsavory (or “unsaviory” so to speak.) My song is about “Mean Jesus.” The fed-up messiah who sheds his Lambskin at the end of Everything — He’s “kicking ass and taking names".” I lifted Him right out of your standard boilerplate fire & brimstone sermon.

“No more Mister Nice Guy / Your time is coming soon… / Jesus got all the dirt on you / …gonna put the hurt on you / If you don’t get right before the final bell… / Jesus gonna dump you right straight into…”

You get the idea.

A little personal bio note is apt here: I went through a genuine, evangelical, fundamentalist phase when I was a youngster. Later, as I grew away from it, I marveled at what I call the “Cosmic Bait-and-Switch,” which occurs thusly: The whole selling point of Born-Again Christianity to a young soul-searcher like myself is that Jesus embodies that Divine enlightening all-loving compassion, mystically melting away your teenage bewilderment, alienation, ennui and latent existential angst. But strangely, once initiated onto the Christian path, you’re introduced to unpleasant Lord Jesus waiting at the End . Meanwhile, and furthermore, you’re still fraught with the same messy, anxious psychology you showed up with at the beginning of the journey. And the worse you feel, the more you wonder if you’re doing it wrong. You’re wondering, are you gonna be spared the same hellish fate you’ve been warning your non-believing friends about? And your steady diet of fiery End-Times sermons is starting to give you spiritual indigestion.

That’s what my song would be about. And somehow, it would be humorous.

(A side note: I’ve been feeling a lot more at home with this song since I read Kristin Kobes DuMez’s amazing book Jesus and John Wayne.)

My song “Jesus” seems to be enjoyed on different levels, for different reasons. Some folks just like the satire part. American Christianity has a noticeable bully-streak, and my secular friends like to see the dragon poked. (That’s fine and fun, yes. But not my only true intent.) On a weird other hand, I’ve had devout, believing audience members come up to me and say, “Thank you for writing that song. ‘Cause people need to know what’s gonna happen to them if they don’t get right with God.” Okaayyy, I guess? But that’s 180-degrees in my diametrically opposite direction. (This is what I call the “All in the Family” phenomenon. Recall that ground-breaking Norman Lear sitcom from the 70’s? There were plenty of Americans who identified with and loved the satirically bigoted Archie Bunker character.)

But I reflect on the golden highlight of my songwriting life, when a young man in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho innocently provided the kernel of insight into my own song, and in turn, taught me a lesson about my entire art of songwriting. After my set at Moon Time. He was paradoxically uplifted by the payoff hook line in each chorus, which most people find either irreverently funny or cuttingly harsh:

1) “Jesus loves everyone, it’s true / He loves everyone but you… “ 2) “Everyone of us is running through those doors / Every soul but yours…” and 3) “He’s coming and he’s spreading ‘round the wealth / To everyone but your bad self…”

“I’m an evangelical Christian,” he said (I paraphrase). “And the one feeling that bothers me deep down, that I can’t shake, is that everyone else is connecting, getting the full salvation of God’s love but me. Somehow I’m not doing it right.”

I swelled with gratitude. That’s personal, vulnerable stuff, which he found articulated in my song in a way that reached him, even though it sounds like a put-on. I knew I was getting at something underneath the surface of all that songy-fun, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. This is why we make music, even the songs that challenge — to connect rather than alienate. This fellow found the humor in my song not as judgment and derision, but as a way to diffuse anxiety around certain troubling tenets of his faith. All the absurd, sacrilege, hyperbole and slapstick rhyme aside, he leaned into it enough to identify. I thanked him for thanking me. I mean, a songster writes hundreds of songs to have moments like that.

Just so you know, I’m not exaggerating here. Everything I’ve written since about 2013 is characteristically better, from a more enlightened process.

But songs can be about more than one thing. “Jesus” indeed contains covert socio-political commentary. One of my techniques for mining the right language & melody in a song, is to imagine not only who is speaking, but who is being spoken to. Or spoken at. This helps me embody a character as vividly as possible. A lot of folks get this right away: The person being preached at in this song is gay.

It’s no secret that the bullying-wing of The Church reserves its harshest treatment for LGBT. It’s also no secret that there are only two things that get me heated up in a conversation — racism & homophobia. So, if I seem a little over-the-top in this song, there’s your explanation.