A Johnny Cash Glee Club (or Nasty Looks At Love)

Sometimes I’m stunned alert to the intentions and efforts of God. This video did that to me.

A large group of Hollywood celebrities and music industry chart-toppers sing of the coming wrath of God upon sinners. It looks weird, and a little bit eerie. It’s a virtual sing-a-long to a Johnny Cash song, “God’s Gonna Cut You Down.”

I know there are believers in those industries—whenever I breeze past a Grammy Awards or an Academy Awards show it seems like someone always gives glory to God. And I don’t know that person, so I can’t say what their life is like or what the other evidence of their love of God is. But I’m skeptical. I’ve seen one too many crosses noosing the neck of a celebrity bad boy or girl to not be suspicious. But since I’m not swimming in that pool of people, I don’t know if praising God is only faddish or genuine.

And so this video. It’s crammed full of bad boys and bad girls. But they’re not singing about the wonder of the gospel of God’s grace to us in Christ—that I would love! Who better to picture the grace of God than those who already picture the need of it? Instead, they’re singing about His coming wrath! Like they’re warning us. They’re doing the very things they’re warning us about.

I don’t know. Maybe the likes of Chris Rock and Johnny Depp and Kanye West and Kris Kristofferson and Justin Timberlake and Cheryl Crow and Woody Harrelson and the Dixie Chicks and Whoopie Goldberg and lots of other nasty looking boys and girls I don’t recognize know something . . . and I simply don’t know that they know it.

I do know that sometimes God’s love for the nasty looks ridiculous, like He’s misplaced it. I want to tell Him to take it back and put it somewhere else where a better reward is waiting. Oops. That would have meant bad news for me back in 1980.

I rest my life on this (and maybe they do too): The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 5:20,21)

I sure would like to know what those in the video are thinking as they sing . . . It boggles my mind. I don’t know, but He does—and He’s not worried. Have a look at the video.