Grey areas and spurious choices.

I have two favourite thinking times. Well, I suppose it's three really.

When I'm falling asleep at night, when I'm waking up in the morning, and when I'm in the bath.

The bath one has an extra dimension. Sometimes I think or pray, which is the same as the falling asleep and waking up times, but sometimes I listen to music — which I never do either side of sleeping, because I share a bed and can't be faffed with earbuds.

Today in the bath I thought I'd listen to some music, and went looking on YouTube for the glorious Willie Nelson. I have two particular favourites, When we all get to heaven, and Revive us again. So I listened to those, and then thought I really ought to expand my horizons and try one I hadn't heard before instead of always re-running my favourites in my usual way. From the YouTube list I picked out I'd rather have Jesus, which I thought sounded nice.

I love a good hymn tune, but I also listen with a scrutinising ear to the words, asking myself what I think of the theology, where it all leads and weighing up how true is what I'm hearing.

So here is Verse One of I'd Rather Have Jesus:

1. I’d rather have Jesus than silver or gold;
   I’d rather be His than have riches untold;
   I’d rather have Jesus than houses or lands;
   I’d rather be led by His nail-pierced hand
   • Refrain:
     Than to be the king of a vast domain
     Or be held in sin’s dread sway;
     I’d rather have Jesus than anything
     This world affords today.

Verse Two continues in much the same vein:

1. I’d rather have Jesus than men’s applause;
   I’d rather be faithful to His dear cause;
   I’d rather have Jesus than worldwide fame;
   I’d rather be true to His holy name

And Verse Three adds nothing in particular but just summarises everything nicely.

Well, now.

A couple of things came to mind on listening to this song. The first was, doesn't Willie Nelson make his living as a singer? I wondered if he accepts royalties for his performance of these hymns — as he certainly deserves to do. I thought about the ethics of taking a payment for singing "I'd rather have Jesus than silver or gold", and thought on balance it's better to be paid for that than for singing some creepy number involving just waiting for a girl to turn sixteen . . .

But it struck me as a grey area nonetheless.

And then there's the business of spurious choices. Willie Nelson, singing he'd rather have Jesus than silver or gold — but isn't he getting both? Isn't singing the hymns of the faith, to and for the faithful, a nice little earner? Maybe it's not, I don't know, in his case. But I've often paused to boggle over the singer-songwriters who have actually copyrighted and take royalties from songs with words lifted straight from the Bible! So I wasn't sure that Willie Nelson was being asked to choose between Jesus and riches/houses/lands/men's applause, in this instance.

Then my thinking spread beyond Willie Nelson to all the rest of us who might have sung this song, in earnest faith, in church. And I wondered, in my sceptical way, if this wasn't a whole set of spurious choices. Nobody has ever offered me riches untold or land in quantity — certainly not worldwide fame or men's applause. It's easy to say I'd rather have Jesus than something I'm not being offered in the first place.

Then I wondered, would I rather have Jesus than say the rude thing about my next door neighbour's creeper that's choking the life out of our plants? Would I rather have Jesus than express my irritation at some small thing inadvertently done by my kind and patient spouse? Would I rather have Jesus than duck out of attending the Local Preacher's Meeting? On balance, I have to admit, the evidence is all against me.

Then I got out of the bath.