As my life has gotten busier, I have listened to less and less music through the day. When I drive I listen to preaching or talk on the phone. It is simply my reality. I might even pray a little. However, a few weeks ago I got the chance to go to a Southern Gospel concert. That is immaterial, but I heard a song that has stuck with me. It is called Good Ole Boys. The sound is not great on the video.
This song has stuck with me because it has mirrored my life. Look, it's no secret the way I used to live my life. It was rough. It was rowdy. It was sinful. I am ashamed of it and I am not here to brag about sins of my past. The reason I am approaching this subject is because I was the quintessential Good Ole Boy the song mentions. If you asked people to describe me from age 16 to 22 they might have even used those words paired with some other colorful vocabulary. I am from the great Southern state of Arkansas and where I grew up there are not many things looked upon better than being a good ole boy. We cherish the idea of it, even when we use it as a negative connotation.
Why does this matter? It matters because there is a growing epidemic of good ole boy virus in the evangelical Bible Belt. You see, we poke fun at the godless heathen up North or on the coasts for their lifestyle devoid of a focus on the higher things in life, all while holding up as the standard this good ole boy image. It tears me up inside knowing that people that I know and love and grew up with fall victim to this idea of what it means to be a good Southern man.
Being a good Southern man used to mean that you worked from sunup until sundown every day but Sunday, when you worshiped God with your family. It was sacrificial love displayed in every aspect of a man's life. Have you ever met an old farmer with a back bent from years of labor on his own land? The honest mechanic that goes in the hole on a job from time to time to help out the struggling single mother? Even the lawyer with the passion for his hometown that writes the will of everyone in the neighborhood because they asked his mama if he might have time on his day off to help them out. All the while being a man that led his family in prayer at the dinner table and at their bedside each night. A man that made God his priority. I know and have known men like this.
If you want to go there and I guess we must since I am discussing the Southern identity we might talk just a little Civil War. There are two men that are idolized in the South for their role in the War of Northern Aggression (tongue firmly in cheek). Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson are the shining stars of our great Southern mythology.
This is not a history lesson but a call back from the edge. Our collective inheritance as Southern men has now been reduced to some loose combination of heavy drinking, football, and hunting. Look I love football and hunting (I am Southern after all). I'll leave the drinking sermon for a different venue. However, if all we are is the sum of these things we have no shred of our heritage left.
Jesus Christ has been the lynchpin of Southern American civilization since the beginning and it is time that we Southern men reclaim that. If we examine our lives and find that we are lacking in the one area that has been the central focus of those many of us claim to admire then we have become the apple that fell far from the tree. The bottom line is plainly stated in the song above. "Good Ole Boys don't make it into Heaven, Good Ole Boys don't wear a crown, Good Ole Boys don't live forever where the saints of God are found". Living life in a relatively good way never saved anyone. Only Jesus can.
I am fully aware that this is not a strictly Southern problem. I am simply speaking from my life experience. People everywhere are relying on their goodness to buy them eternity. Please reconsider. I love who I am and where I come from, but I shudder to think what we have made of the heritage we have been given in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
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