Marti and I have been enjoying a book given to me by our good friend Dave titled Dylan — What Happened?. The author is Paul Williams, late rock and roll journalist who created Crawdaddy!, the first national US magazine of rock music criticism.

After Bob Dylan became a Christian in 1979 and wrote two albums entirely of music about Jesus and the gospel, he scheduled two weeks of concerts at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco, an intimate 2,000-seat venue, to showcase his new music and his new-found faith. The author attended all seven concerts the first week, and during the second week, he wrote this book, a short, 125-page critique of those concerts in an attempt to understand what had led Dylan to embrace Jesus Christ.

The uniqueness of this book is found primarily in the fact that the author is not a Christian and yet speaks favorably of Dylan becoming one — one of the few critics who did. Though the audiences were somewhat hostile in the beginning over Dylan’s refusal to sing any of his old songs, his new songs about his faith and the strength of the music eventually won them over every night, and won over Paul Williams right away, and he captured that impact in this book. By the end of two weeks, the reception was so overwhelming that they booked another week of concerts at the Warfield.  Despite the critics, the fans loved it.

The takeaways from this book are many given the rare approach to familiar subject matter, but the one most impressed upon me is the fact that the writer, as an unbeliever, was able to separate the reality of Dylan’s belief from the negative impressions he and many people have of Christians and Christianity. I have a tendency to despair over the many bad examples of Christianity the media has been focusing on for the last 50 years, thinking that people sincerely seeking Christ may not be able to find Him amidst all the errors. But then I remember that God says, “If you truly seek Me you will find Me” — regardless.

A good example of that would be when the author writes that he refuses to enter into a relationship with God that “excludes a large part of humankind until or unless they decide to see things my way and express their faith in terms of my language and my historical and cultural referents. This exclusivity — not the love of and personal relationship with God — is the crux of the issue for me.”

What he is saying here is that Dylan was able to show him through his life and his music that true Christianity is found in the love of God and a personal relationship with God, period.

We all can take this to heart in that all the bad examples of Christianity can be offset by one good example of the reality of our own relationship with God and love for God that rings true because of the strength of our commitment and the love that spills out to others (grace turned outward). There simply is no stronger proof than you.