Two of the strongest memories from my 17
years in Tokyo are of Belgian beer and country and western music.
I was in Tokyo in the 1980s when the yen
and the stock market were soaring. The department stores were awash with the
top imported goods from around the globe. As an enthusiast for premium beers
I discovered those of Belgium, surely the best in the world. I became a huge
fan of the fruity
Hoegaarden
wheat beers and of the full-bodied, top-fermenting
Orval and
Chimay beers, the latter both made by monks in Trappist abbeys.
It was also in Tokyo that I discovered
country and western music, thanks to the programming of the
Far East Network, the US armed
forces radio station, and I became a big Johnny Cash fan.
One day I borrowed from a public library
a Johnny Cash LP record called A Believer Sings the Truth, and made a
cassette tape of it. I listened often. It was Cash at his hard-driving,
rockabilly best. It was also – though I didn’t realise it at the time – a
celebration of hard-core Southern Baptist fundamentalism.
I wasn’t a Christian in Japan, and there
was no apparent Christian influence on me there. I have often wondered how
it was that on arriving in Australia in 1993 I so unexpectedly felt the urge
to turn up one Sunday at my local Baptist church, and so quickly gave my
life to Jesus. Could it have resulted from a constant listening to Johnny
Cash?
A Believer Sings the Truth
is surely one of the great Christian recordings (and I don’t understand why
it hasn’t been put on CD). At the time I didn’t pay much attention to the
lyrics, or so I thought. But was I picking up more than I realised?
From lyrics like these?
I was dying,
And the time was flying,
And I heard Him calling me.
My will was bent,
And I did repent,
And His sweet love set me free.
Or these?
And the dead of all the ages
Who believed on Him will rise.
And I’ll be one,
I’ll be one,
In the first resurrection,
When He comes.
Or these?
When the tribulation darkens the way,
That’s when you get on your knees and
pray.
Or these?
Yes, I know when Jesus saved me,
Saved my soul.
The very moment He forgave me,
He made me whole.
He took away my heavy burdens,
Lord, He gave me peace within.
Or these?
I was lifted one night
By God’s blinding light
And it shook me right out of my sleep.
As His love entered in
It washed away my sin
And I praised Him down on my knees.
Several writers have
speculated that the immense popularity in Japan of the music of Johann
Sebastian Bach is bringing many Japanese to the Lord. Could Johnny Cash have
done the same for me? Johnny Cash and perhaps some Trappist beer?
January 6th, 2003
