Monday, February 2, 2009

Neon and other naughtiness

Give this a read:

A.E. Stallings, Troilet on a Line Apocryphally Attributed to Martin Luther

Why should the Devil get all the good tunes,
The booze and the neon and Saturday night,
The swaying in darkness, the lovers like spoons?
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes?
Does he hum them to while away sad afternoons
And the long, lonesome Sundays? Or sing them for spite?
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes,
The booze and the neon and Saturday night?

It is true that Martin Luther took pub songs (drinking ditties) and put sacred lyrics to them - the very songs we sing today and defend as God's very best - but don’t get too alarmed. “Apocryphally” essentially means falsely or inauthentically – so Martin Luther did not really say any part of this. The authorship is not what I'm really interested in though - it's the sentiment, the idea, it espouses. Fascinating, isn’t it, that we believe WRONG to be more fun than RIGHT?
Resist the temptation to look at specifics (i.e. is neon really evil?) and hear the thinking instead. Why do we believe the Devil gets all the good tunes?

2 comments:

Todd said...

I think in some ways, in the moment, in our brokenness . . . wrong IS more fun than right.

Jared said...

Makes you understand his statement to sin boldly a little more clearly.