Theology according to the Rolling Stones

August 5, 4:32 PMFaith & Culture ExaminerDr. Bob Beltz

Previous Next

8 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Faith & Culture Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

               Modern Theologians?

I’ve been thinking about playing the Rolling Stones in church. Over the last few weeks I’ve been teaching a series on the supernatural universe and I can’t shake this old song the Stones recorded back in 1968. You usually don’t think of the Stones as being valuable assets in communicating spiritual truth, but I think one of their early songs communicates an essential spiritual truth in a way that some of the best of theologians can’t equal. Even more unlikely, the name of the song I refer to is “Sympathy for the Devil.”

The song was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. In later interviews Jagger attributed inspiration for the piece to Baudelaire, but critics have linked it to Russian novelist Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and the Margarita. Sung in the first person, Jagger begins the piece by singing:

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for long, long years
Stole many man's soul and faith

In these short phrases the song introduces the concept of personified evil. Jagger later identifies his narrator specifically as “Lucifer.” When theologians attempt to piece together the origins of evil they usually identify Lucifer as one of the highest order of angels that became corrupted through his great beauty and decided he no longer wanted to serve God, but be God. He was cast out of God’s presence and in this scenario convinced one-third of the angelic ranks to rebel with him. These fallen angels then became what we today identify as the Devil and demons that wage war against God and his purposes. Note how the song spells this out. The second stanza finds the narrator informing us that:

And I was 'round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate

Then Mick launches into the chorus:

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game

We live in a complex world. It is “puzzling.” It is a world where “good” happens. There is love, beauty, compassion, creativity, and wonder. But it is also a world in which pain, suffering, death, and destruction are daily occurrences. Religious leaders, thinkers, and philosophers throughout the ages have tried to create unified systems of thought that bring these conflicting realities together in some meaningful explanation of life. The Stones continue:

I stuck around St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the Czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain

I rode a tank
Held a general's rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank

I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made

I shouted out,
"Who killed the Kennedys?"
When after all
It was you and me

From the time of Christ through the modern era, “Sympathy for the Devil” paints a picture of evil at work in the most destructive of human events. The question we need to ask is whether this concept reflects a primitive belief system that needed to invent the realm of the demonic to explain the tragedies of life, or whether the picture and description in the Bible, on which the concepts contained in the song are based, is a timeless description of the true nature of the fallen universe.

In one final stanza, Lucifer suggests that:

Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
'Cause I'm in need of some restraint

The implication is that wrong can be right and right can be wrong, or at least that our narrator can twist the facts in a way that “puzzle” us. The conclusion is a warning:

So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste.

I don’t think Jagger and Richards necessarily hold a biblical world-view. I imagine they were simply trying to create a song that wrestled with the fact that something is horribly wrong with the way things are and found the imagery of the Bible helpful in communicating the idea. I remember the outrage that accompanied the release of the song in 1968. The Stones were accused of being Satanists and perverting the mind of America’s youth. At the time I couldn't have cared less. I just thought the music was great. Then when a young man was murdered during the Stones concert at Altamont the rumor spread that it happened while the band was performing this piece. It wasn’t true (they were actually performing “Under My Thumb”), but the rumors grew. Then several years later, as I wrestled with these issues and sought to come to grips with the problem of pain and evil in the world I rediscovered the song and found it to be pure genius. As I found myself addressing these issues in my teaching work I couldn’t shake the song from my mind. I even went to YouTube and discovered that the session in the studio when the song was recorded back in June of 1968 had been filmed. It seems that Jean Luc-Godard was working on a film on the American counter-culture and dropped in the studio to shoot some footage of the Stones – just as they were recording the song.

So what do you think? Should I play it in church? The Stones and theology? Jesus and “Sympathy for the Devil?” What would Jesus do – or play?