Recently I heard the track “Dark Passenger” by the group Fozzy. It starts off with:
Jesus is my co-pilot
Or that’s just what they say
But it’s not the Savior
Who guides me every day
Although the lyrics are a bit ambiguous, and it almost sounds like the anti-hero of the song wants to repent, you know it is the Devil who is guiding the tune’s subject every day.
Fozzy’s song brought another train one to mind (for some reason, when I hear the word “passenger” I think of trains…I give credit to my train-loving 6 year-old :-)). Curtis Mayfield wrote this classic (“People Get Ready”), which begins with:
People get ready, there’s a train a comin’
You don’t need no baggage, you just get on board
All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin’
on’t need no ticket, you just thank the Lord
And…as my mind continued it’s odd way of traveling down the tracks…”Crazy Train” by Ozzy Osbourne was next in line. It’s initial verses are:
Crazy, but that’s how it goes
Millions of people living as foes
Maybe it’s not too late
To learn how to love, and forget how to hateMental wounds not healing
Life’s a bitter shame
I’m goin’ off the rails on a crazy train
I’m goin’ off the rails on a crazy train
So…based on how they all start…which train would you like to ride?
But my brain didn’t stop there. It seemed to me that those three songs, in a slightly different order, also mimicked the choices C.S. Lewis wrote about who Jesus is in Mere Christianity:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
Jesus is either part of the Crazy Train, is a Dark Passenger, or He is Lord. What say you?
And…as Lewis says…”You must make your choice.”
(Not choosing is a choice against “Lord”…)
Now, in case you are interested (and understanding that YouTube links don’t always remain working), here are the three songs that inspired this post in the order they were mentioned:
Fozzy’s “Dark Passenger”:
[youtube=http://youtu.be/8KYjGVbcslU&w=512&rel=0]
Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready” (performed by Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck):
[youtube=http://youtu.be/yC_j_dzkaVE&w=512&rel=0]
And Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train”:
[youtube=http://youtu.be/3MLp7YNTznE&w=512&rel=0]