How perspectives of classic and modern folk can relate to Christ: OLD (Bob Dylan)
A few years ago, I first heard the nasally, honest and yet insincere voice of Bob Dylan. This was not by choice, but the result of his album “Highway 61 Revisited” being the only album I owned at the time. So, I listened to it — and I despised it. Never have such refined words left such an unrefined mouth as his, and I could not look past that whining tone for the first few listens.
Eventually, I came to the realization that Dylan’s music cannot be properly enjoyed as elevator music — out of focus, just providing mood, as music is supposed to function. How can an object in focus be dismissed out of the spotlight like some background noise? It cannot, and Dylan’s music is the very essence of an object in focus. If we treat it as anything else, it is a painful clang barren of beauty or cohesiveness.
This can be seen at a glance from his 1964 piece “The Times They Are a-Changin’” in the lines, “Come mothers and fathers throughout the land / And don’t criticize what you can’t understand / Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command / Your old road is rapidly aging.” Rarely has a more timeless message been etched into the American secular music catalog. The beauty within it, however, will not be seen unless one steps close to the canvas and examines every brush stroke of this musical artifact.
The music industry has long profited from passerby songs: songs that can be quickly understood and remembered by those who only have a slight encounter with them. We hear these songs on the radio, in the mall and at parties. The music of Dylan, however, is only of high value when it stands as the focus of a scene and not a mere mood narration or a colored stage light intended to guide listeners’ feelings. It is music that must be learned to be listened to, not listened to in order to learn. Whether good or bad, a tone previously unheard must be met with newly tuned ears if a message is to ever be derived from it.
The significance of these unique listening methods stretches far beyond Dylan’s music, though. Christians must treat the gospel the way we ought to treat Bob Dylan songs. The gospel was not meant to be a hitchhiker of life that we can pick up and drop off at our will. It is meant as a proclamation of the good news of salvation that all people receive through what God decreed and what Jesus completed on the cross. How could we treat front-page news as an inconsequential paragraph in an old newspaper? The story for those who love Christ is one of final victory, and it ought to be treated as such, just as Dylan’s music works only as a centerpiece of artwork and not a quiet radio hum in a cold waiting room.
Our ears are frequently distracted and bent toward things of this world. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him” (John 14:15-17). In our striving to know God, we must put away our worldly way of thinking. We must learn to listen differently. When Jonah did not listen to the Lord’s command, he was swallowed by a fish. When Balaam did not listen to the Lord, his donkey verbally rebuked him. God will get his message across to us somehow. Let us be attentive to him solely and quick to listen, hoping that he will not have to refine our hearing as he did for Jonah and Balaam.
Dylan’s music has taught me many things. In particular, it has taught me how to really listen and that some messages require individuals to listen differently. The magnificent works of Dylan are far detached from the gospel in value and in meaning. A thing that is holy cannot be compared with something crafted by a sinner. Nevertheless, the lessons we can learn from properly listening to Dylan may just be the prompt we so often need to turn our ears to the Lord.
Kilker is an opinion writer for the Liberty Champion