Daily Archives: March 18, 2009

  Got this book from Mom for my birthday in September ’08 (thanks again, Mom!!!) and just now getting around to reading it.  I LOVE this book and here are a few of my favorite passages:

Being “saved” was a cultural rite of passage in rural Southern communities of the period. If someone hadn’t “made a decision” by their early teenage years, the adults would wonder why. There were no open atheists in Dyess-only good Christians and backsliders. The pressure to conform made it difficult to differentiate between those who claimed conversion simply because it was expected to them and those who’d made a genuine commitment.                        

At the age of twelve, Cash answered the call during a revival in 1944. This was the age that many Southern Baptists regarded as the “age of accountability,” when children were considered morally developed enough to choose or refuse. This was the age, according to the Gospel of Luke, that Jesus went to Jerusalem with his parents for the Passover and, with a clear sense of divinity, debated with the rabbis in the temple.                                                                                                             

If Cash remembered who preached the night of his conversion he never mentioned it. It’s unlikely that he heard anything that he hadn’t heard before. It was just the right night. He’d always known that someday he would have to choose one way or another, and he’d tried to put it off, but this night, for a reason he couldn’t explain, he felt that postponing the decision would, in itself, be a decision. How many times could a person put off salvation? If Jesus Christ was “the way, the truth and the life,” what possible benefits were there in keeping him waiting?  Cash believed in the reality of heaven He also believed in the reality of hell. Heaven was like the sound of sweet music working on your soul at the end of a hard day’s work. Hell was like the red glow of burning fields in the still of an Arkansas night. The fear of hell was one of the instruments God used to make us hunger after heaven. When the preacher called for those who wanted their sins forgiven to make their way to the front, Cash got out of his seat as the congregation sang “Just as I am”:   Just as I am, without one plea, But that Thy blood was shed for me,   And that Thou biddest me come to Thee, O Lamb of God, I come, I come!”          Cash would never regret or renounce his decision. And though he would go through long periods of disobedience, he never lost the conviction that Christ had accepted him, just as he was, and that nothing could reverse that acceptance.” (pages 21-22)

“There’s 3 different kinds of Christian,” said Cash. “There’s preaching Christians, church-playing Christians, and there’s practicing Christians. I’m trying very hard to be a practicing Christian. If you take the words of Jesus literally and apply them to your everyday life, you discover that the greatest fulfillment you’ll ever find really does lie in giving. And that’s why I do things like prison concerts.” (pg. 126) 

“I don’t have a career anymore,” Cash announced. “What I have now is a ministry. Everything I have and everything I do is given completely to Jesus Christ now. I’ve lived all my life for the devil up until now, and from here on I’m going to live it for the Lord.” (pg. 146)

“I see no glimmer of hope in the scientific world,” he said. “There’s no place to hide. The whole world is a problem…Jesus Christ is the answer. There is no other.” (pg. 151)

“By being a Christin in show business, Cash was performing a difficult balancing act, and there were few good examples for him to follow. He would be attacked by agnostics and atheists if he appeared too pious. He would be denounced by the religious community if he appeared too wordly. “There are times that I want to go off into the woods and cr, because what I feel is too big a load for me to carry,” he once admitted. “We’re only called to be Christians, and I don’t feel any special calling, but I seem to have been given much by God. And much seems to be required of me.” (pg. 161)