From Zimmerman to Dylan, Vampires to Jesus

When Robert Allen Zimmerman decided to change who he was in the late 1950's he became Bob Dylan; the freewheelin' epitomy of American songwriting and the trailblazing leader of a new form of politically minded, socially commentative and philosophically driven culture of musicians.

Nobody knew then why Robert Allen Zimmerman had changed his name and chosen such an unpaved path to follow, to this day nobody knows why he chose the last name Dylan. (originally "Dillon")
It was a big deal back then to change your name and your lifestyle in the blink of an eye and Bob Dylan was one of the first to do it in the name of music; but for Bob it paid off in a big way. Today Bob Dylan is recognized as one of America's most highly regarded popular songwriters, and his enduring contributions to the American oeuvre are comparable to those of Stephen Foster, Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, and Hank Williams. In the interests of time I won't mention the countless legion of songwriters that are known today because they took a page from Bob Dylan's "How-To" book on becoming an icon.

Changing his name and reinventing himself was not the last big change that Bob Dylan would make.
In late 1978 Bob Dylan got "Saved".

His widely-publicized conversion to Christianity made Bob Dylan perhaps the most famous Jewish apostate in American history.
It is interesting to me and I think it should be noted that Dylan was suffering at this time from a painful divorce as well as an exhausting world tour and far too much alcohol...these life issues must have compounded Dylan's fever for answers and so he began to search the ether again for his next big decision...Jesus.

Many of his die-hard fans rebelled against Dylan's new-found faith...maybe because his lyrics lacked the hard edge the fans had grown accustomed to?
From: "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"
"I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it, I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it, I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin', I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin', I saw a white ladder all covered with water, I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken..."
To: "Are You Ready?
"When destruction cometh swiftly, And there's no time to say a fare-thee-well, Have you decided whether you want to be In heaven or in hell?"

Dylan's hard personal edge toward politics and social injustice had turned into a hard spiritual edge that alienated his loyal fans and caused his personal success as a songwriter to take a backseat to his decision to follow Christ.
Yet again, Bob Dylan had forsaken his past and who he was to choose a new lifestyle and a new direction...a new "god" if you will.
Did he have to forsake his personal feelings for social and political reform to follow Jesus?
To quote Dylan shortly after he declared his new-found faith in Jesus: "There was a presence in the room that couldn't have been anybody but Jesus. I truly had a born-again experience, if you want to call it that.... It was a physical thing. I felt it all over me. I felt my whole body tremble. I told you the times they are a-changin' and they did. I said the answer was blowin' in the wind and it was. I'm telling you now Jesus is coming back, and He is! And there is no other way of salvation."

Dylan's Christian albums when compared to his previous "non-religious" offerings could only be called commercial flops. In a 1980 interview in Dayton Ohio he was asked if his choice to become a Christian was an easy one, Dylan replied: "It would have been easier if I had become a Buddhist, or a Scientologist or if I had gone to Sing Sing."
Dylan's evangelical phase didn't last long and he went back to writing the songs that his fans had been waiting for for several years...he continued his career as a critical and commercial success to this day.

There are several icons of music and film that at one time during their career they chose to be a Christian-Singer, or a Christian-Actor and virtually every one of them found that their original passion for music or film or whatever had to be placed on the back burner because they were too busy defending their decision to become a Christian - Ultimately their careers and personal lives suffered because in their attempts to reinvent themselves as Christian artists they had lost all credibility as artists in the first place.
Just ask Pat Boone, Kenny Rogers, M.C. Hammer and Ozzie Ozborne.

The question is this: Does a relationship with Jesus require that all attributes of a former life die and a completely new life begin in order to glorify God?

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Unless you've been hiding under a rock for the last 20-plus years you are pretty well aware of who Anne Rice is and why you know her name.

To be fair, you may not know Anne Rice by name but instead you may know who she is because of what she has given the entertainment world...Does "Interview With A Vampire" ring any bells? Anne Rice has been writing vampire horror novels since 1973 and many of them have been hugely successful; "Interview With A Vampire" and "Queen of the Damned" to name a few.

In a recent article that my brother emailed to me, interviewer David Gates got in touch with Anne Rice to find out where she's been since 2003.
According to Gates "After 25 novels in 25 years, Rice, 64, hasn't published a book since 2003's "Blood Chronicle." Maybe because she was busy having surgery for an intestinal blockage, and also back in 1998, when she went into a sudden diabetic coma; that same year she returned to the Roman Catholic Church, which she'd left at 18. Maybe also because Anne's Husband of 41 years, Stan Rice, died of a brain tumor in 2002.
But now she's back and guess what...yep, she got "Saved."

Anne Rice's most recent novel "Christ the Lord - Out of Egypt" gets released on November 1st, it is Rice's first novel since becoming a Christian.
"I promised," she says, "that from now on I would write only for the Lord."

History, does indeed repeat itself.
I hope for her sake that Rice's millions of fans are accepting of this major change in her fictional bent and more power to her; but I'll be watching Anne Rice very closely.