Ringo Starr is no Bob Dylan. He has a below-average voice. His songs are mostly hokie. But he's a great drummer and, as the three members of the Beatles who invited him to replace Pete Best as they began their recording career knew, a tremendous personality. The Beatle-y spirit of fun lives on in the music he continues to produce.In January, Starr released Liverpool 8, timed to coincide with his concert in Liverpool, part of that city's degination as "culture capital" of Europe for the year.
The title track, co-written with Eurythmc Dave Stewart, is a fun remembrance of his hometown and the Beatles years. Overall, it's a nice little LP, although Starr's collaboration with Mark Hudson--who, along with longtime Ringo sidemen, the Roundheads, is co-composer and producer of all but one of the LP's tracks--is growing a bit tiresome and predictable.
I also enjoy the rather offbeat and evocative tribute to his late buddy, Harry Nilsson, Harry's Song.
Two of the tracks could be omitted: Pasodobles, a Spanish-tinged song that wouldn't be good even if Starr could sing it and R U Ready?
The latter song reflects Starr's apparently growing, if superficial, interest in spiritual things and in his own mortality. In it, he equates Jesus, Buddha, and Krishna. He sings at one point, "Jesus was a wise man and everyone's a Saint/Are you ready to cross over, are you ready?"
I'm glad that Ringo thinks that Jesus was a wise man. But if he thinks that makes him ready to face death and eternity, Jesus would ask him to think again.
Jesus made bigger claims for himself than being wise. "The Father and I are one," He says, equating Himself God. And He says, "“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
Starr's lyrics reflect one of the commonest ways of dodging Jesus' call to turn from sin and believe in the message that His death and resurrection are the way to life with God forever. People call Him a nice man, a good teacher, or one of many ways to God, but not the one and only Lord and God Jesus claims to be. These dodges are attempts to have it both ways, to have Jesus without following Him.
Jesus won't have any of it, though! When confronting Jesus' message about Himself, that He is God and the only way to eternity with God, we have, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, three alternatives: We can (1) call him a liar; (2) call him a madman; or (3) fall down before him as the Lord and God he claims to be.
If Jesus is lying about Himself, He can't be the wise man that Ringo and, it seems increasingly, many, dismissively call Him.
The problem with these common statements about Jesus is that they overlook what's been revealed about Him and chronicled in the very books--the New Testament gospels--that anyone would have to call upon to label Jesus as wise.
Ringo Starr is no Bob Dylan. And though I like him, he's no theologian. And clearly, logic isn't his strong suit either.
1 comment:
Very good points Mark.
Other religions such as buddism and hinduism don't deny that Jesus ever existed. In fact they claim that he was a great teacher and a wise man. But they stop short of acknowledging that He is THE Savior...the Son of God.
It's their way of putting a slight twist on christianity...altering our beliefs just a little bit so that we start to see things their way.
The fact that Jesus died, was buried and raised to life again has to be an integral part of who we are and what we teach. It's where we have to draw the line in the sand and make clear to other people and world religions that we won't be moved or swayed in who we say Jesus is.
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