Growing Younger in the Truth

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats

Too noble to neglect.

Deceived me into thinking I had something to protect.

Good and bad, I define these terms

Quite clear, no doubt, somehow.

Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.

You win the prize if you recognize these lyrics.

Name of song-2 points.

Artist-5 points.

Album-10 points.

You will get a one-point credit if you say The Byrds or Ramones, but you are still wrong.

Hint: He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. You actually get another 20 points if you knew this.

Hint: He was born Robert Allen Zimmerman. Another 20 points.

Hint: He started his career with a debut album in 1962.

Face it, you’re hopeless if you don’t know by now that it is none other than Bob Dylan.

Song: My Back Pages

Album: Another Side of Bob Dylan-1963. (He didn’t actually sing the song live until 1988, BTW.)

A lot of people consider Dylan one of the greatest contemporary poets, and this includes The Noble Foundation. I heartily agree.

The lyrics above are the last verse from the song, and they speak deeply to me and echo some of my more poignant struggles and victories. Let’s walk through them together:

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats…

It all started with an “Ugh”. Somehow, someway, it just didn’t quite fit anymore. The theology, I mean. At first, I couldn’t put my finger on it; all I knew was that I was missing something. It was bigger, more mysterious, more satisfying than what I understood it to be. It just had to be. After all, we were talking about the creator of the universe here. But these “abstract threats” to the comfort zone box were not accepted easily. My “guard” did all sorts of resisting, fighting, justifying, and threatening in the reverse.

Run.

But run where…away from God? Away from a deeper resonance. Just couldn’t do it, and

…I was so much older then. I’m younger than that now.

...Too noble to neglect

Deceived me into thinking I had something to protect.

Ah, noble, that’s a great cover-up word. I was using it all the time to justify and posture how I needed to guard the faith and “protect” God. Please don’t laugh. No matter how irrational it sounded or to what extent I had been “deceived” into making the story work, I was being “noble”. For example, I questioned how anyone could reconcile the dinosaur bones found buried in the earth and the subsequent dating to any sort of biblical timeline.

Response, “Don’t you think that God could have created the earth with age already built in?”

Umm…Huh?

Are you trying to tell me that God made the earth somewhere between 6,000 & 10,000 years ago and that the dinosaurs never really walked the earth, and that their bones were placed there by God from the start?

Yes.

…I was so much older then. I’m younger than that now.

Good and bad, I define these terms

Quite clear, no doubt, somehow

I had bought into dualism lock, stock, and barrel. Vertical God relationship & horizontal human relationships, sin & righteousness, them & us, saved & lost, believer & non-believer, sheep & goats, red & blue, and on, and on and…

It was all quite “clear”.

“Somehow”

Because it was mostly from a left-brain perspective. A checklist. All neatly tied up in creeds and doctrines. No wiggle room, no unknowns. The Holy Spirit became the red-headed stepchild. In the family, but never really talked about. Press that concept too hard, and you might end up in rehab.

…I was so much older then. I’m younger than that now.

All the while, I didn’t realize that through these struggles and posturing, a joyous work was going on. The best I could see at times was me just falling forward, and I'm not sure if I called it progress at all.

It was.

It is.

Now, I can actually embrace the journey for what it was and what it is because...

I’m younger than that now.