Page 12 - Edition Summer 22 News and Views revised 31.05.pub (Read-Only)

Don’t wanna judge nobody, don’t wanna be judged
Don’t wanna touch nobody, don’t wanna be touched [John 20:17]

Don’t wanna hurt nobody, don’t wanna be hurt [Isa. 11:9]
Don’t wanna treat nobody like they was dirt [Psalm 18:42]

Brueggemann also refers to Exodus’ Song of the Sea to speak of the prophet/poet energising us
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by giving us songs of praise to sing . Dylan did this in a very biblical and triumphalist way in
‘When the Ship Comes in’, but some of the evangelical songs following his conversion are clearly
rooted in recent experience. In ‘What can I do for You?’ he sings: ‘Pulled me out of bondage and
You made me renewed inside/Filled up a hunger that had always been denied/Opened up a door
no man can shut and You opened it up so wide’. In ‘Pressing on’, he asks, ‘What kind of sign
they need when it all come from within?’ The refrain of ‘Saved’ contains much repetition, with
Dylan wanting to shout about how glad he is to be saved and how he just wants to thank the
Lord. When Dylan became a Christian, he didn’t so much change his beliefs as the whole
orientation of his life. He entered into the experience of the grace of God and discovered new
life pulsing through his veins.

In 1652, George Fox issued the following challenge to those who quote Scripture: ‘You will say,
Christ saith this, and the apostles say this; but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of Light and
hast walked in the Light, and what thou speakest, is it inwardly from God?’ This sense of a first-
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hand experience of God was the kind of faith Dylan claimed and it can lead, as Rod Garner
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suggests, to a poetical theology ‘where the infinite is to be found in everything’. I think Dylan
achieves such a theology in ‘Every Grain of Sand’, where he ‘can see the Master’s hand/In every
leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand’. This is a more reflective work, which sees doubt as an
essential component of faith.

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me

I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man

Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand

Another great piece of theology from Dylan is ‘Blind Willie McTell’, a sombre song which begins:
‘Seen the arrow on the doorpost/Saying, ‘‘This land is condemned’’ ’. The song goes on to
describe the American legacy of slavery and racism, but also to mourn the loss of great (and
largely unknown) blues singers, such as the eponymous McTell. The song ends like this:

Well, God is in His heaven
And we all want what’s His

But power and greed and corruptible seed
Seem to be all that there is

th
4 Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 40 Anniversary Edition (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press) 2018:16-18
5 Quaker faith and practice 19.07
6 Rod Garner, How to be wise: Growing in Love and Discernment (London:SPCK) 2013:49

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