“Folsom Prison Blues” Revisited

In his essay, Paul Louis Metzger utilizes the lyrical imagery of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” to relate to the personal and structural barriers that many ‘prisoners’ experience both within the church and outside it. He states that the church often cultivates exclusionary and elitist attitudes toward ‘outsiders’ and even toward other churches. On the other hand, Cash related to those who were ‘imprisoned’ either literally or spiritually—and he also understood the liberation that Christ offers to the saved. “Before Jesus freed him from his ‘imprisonment’, [Cash] was inside longing to get out. After his turning point, he was outside longing to get in—to help free other slaves.” Paraphrasing Jesus’ words, Metzger states that, “those like Cash who are forgiven much, love much; those who are forgiven little, love little.” We in the church often play down our own sins while labeling those who ‘get caught’ as the real villains—when, in fact, we are all sinners, in need of Christ’s transforming love. Metzger emphasizes that Jesus came to free the captive (whatever form that captivity may take) and he believes that, “we all need a fresh vision of the ‘Personal Jesus’, whose glorious love and mercy and grace are the only things capable of breaking us out of our Folsom blues imprisonment.”