I saw Christ today At a street corner stand In the rags of a beggar he stood He held ballads in his hand   He was crying out "Two a penny Will anyone buy The finest ballads ever made From the stuff of joy"   But the blind and deaf went past Knowing only there An uncouth ballad seller With tail-matted hair   And I whom men call fool His ballads bought Found him who the pieties Have vainly sought   Patrick Kavanagh 1904 - 1967 quoted in The Rock cries Out

  THE ROCK CRIES OUT by Steve Stockman

This quite exceptional book by Steve Stockman sets him firmly in a class of his own. His knowledge and understanding of contemporary music and musicians is impressive, but more, Stocki has an unfettered mind as he applies his theology to lyrics - and vice versa. His theology tells of a man with a refreshing grasp of divine grace that is the bedrock of a rich and meaningful relationship with God.

 

I have known Stocki for a number of years, have read much of his work, indeed his 'Stocki on Life' columns in Faith for Life have often thrown fresh light on a familiar topic or tenet of my Christian faith. But 'The Rock Cries Out' is something very special. In it, he comes across with a startlingly radical approach, but he argues his corner in such an articulate and logical fashion that the open-minded reader cannot but follow.

 

It's a scholarly work, though not heavy, drawing liberally from Barth, Yancey, Stott and others, and yet he masters the 'unmasterable' by enabling them to sit as comfortably with Bob Dylan, Bono, Geldoff and George Harrison as with Paul the apostle. An example; "It was the chanting of GOD, GOD, GOD, high above the temporal landscape that saw George Harrison as some John the Baptist crying in the wilderness of Bullshit Avenue.

 

"Bullshit Avenue is how Harrison had always seen the world he had experienced so   intoxicatingly as a Beatle. His entire career riddled with broadsides at a world that he saw as phoney and sick and that will ultimately curtail your soul from finding its meaning and eternal peace".

 

The Rock Cries Out is a broad sweeping literary masterpiece, ranging, sometimes in a single sentence from Jackson Browne to G K Chesterton, from Plato and Moses, to Paul at the Areopagus, and from Elvis to Cliff Richard and then to Hare Krishna. But the theme runs as a scarlet thread through each page, each character and each song analysed.

 

Let's leave the last word to the author as he quotes John Stott; "How is it then that the philosophers came to know the truths they knew? . the divine logos who had been in the world from the beginning and became fully incarnate in Jesus Christ was distributed by the divine sower everywhere. Thus, 'there seem to be seeds  of truth among all men'".

 

Published by Relevant Books

174 pages paperback

Price £9.99 ($13.99)

Click here to buy on line

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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