Hell and Evangelism: Part 6, God's Gonna Cut You Down

In The Book of Love I have a chapter reflecting upon Judgment Day. I start the chapter with Johnny Cash's last great song "The Man Comes Around", along with "God's Gonna Cut You Down," a song Cash recorded late in his life with Rick Rubin. 

Here are some of the lyrics of "The Man Comes Around":

There's a man goin' 'round takin' names.
And he decides who to free and who to blame.
Everybody won't be treated all the same.
There'll be a golden ladder reaching down.
When the man comes around.

Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers.
One hundred million angels singin'.
Multitudes are marchin' to the big kettle drum.
Voices callin', voices cryin'.
Some are born and some are dyin'.
It's Alpha and Omega's Kingdom come.

And here's some of the lyrics from "God's Gonna Cut You Down": 

You can run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Sooner or later God'll cut you down
Sooner or later God'll cut you down

Go tell that long tongue liar
Go and tell that midnight rider
Tell the rambler, the gambler, the back biter
Tell 'em that God's gonna cut 'em down
Tell 'em that God's gonna cut 'em down

The point I make in The Book of Love about these songs is how popular they were (and are), especially with the younger generations who were tuning into Cash during the American Recordings years with Rubin. Here's the question I ask: Why are songs about hell, Judgment Day, and damnation so appealing?

Psychologists have described what are called "just world beliefs." Just world beliefs refer to our cognitive tendency to believe that the world is morally ordered, that people generally get what they deserve and deserve what they get. Just world beliefs assume that good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people, and that life outcomes reflect moral worth or effort. Overall, these beliefs provide a sense that the world is stable, predictable, and fair.

As the popularly of Cash's Judgment Day songs and the research on just world beliefs illustrate, everyone believes in hell. Maybe not as Scripture imagines it. But we believe in things like karma, fate, and "what comes around, goes around." We long for a morally coherent world, and this longing draws us toward the lyrics of Cash's music. 

To be sure, as I pointed out over the last few posts, conservatives and progressives disagree about who, exactly, God is going to cut down. To say it again, the issue here is hamartiological rather than eschatological. Eschatologically speaking, the man is coming around, deciding who to free and who to blame. Eschatologically speaking, God's going to cut somebody down. But there is sharp debate about who these people might be.

But here's the point I want to make in this post. I get why ex-evangelicals and progressive Christians worry about speaking about hell and Judgment Day. As I've described so many times, there are worries here, often Oedipal in origin, about inducing guilt and shame. To these worries I'd just say, look at how younger audiences were drawn to Cash's songs. True, we want to be clear about our vision of sin, but there is a longing for moral seriousness among young people, even moral severity. It's a longing for a just and morally coherent world. A belief that goodness makes some eternal difference and that evil will, one day, face the music. That the moral arch of the universe is long, but bends toward justice. 

Simply put, we long for Judgment Day because Judgment Day is good news. 

Preach it.