What are you waiting for? You have years of partying, manual labor, and bad dieting under your belt, just like me. It could be any moment that you stand before Christ, and like so many others proclaim ‘Lord, Lord’, just to hear those final words in the end.

It’s 5:30 a.m. on a cool, foggy morning in the heart of Bible Belt America. A man groans as he stands up from tying his work boots. His back is killin’ him — same as always. The two Ibuprofen he swallowed with his black coffee haven’t touched it yet. He climbs into his truck, fires it up, and hits the familiar gravel road leading out to the highway.

It’s the same path he’s taken for years — same one his dad took before him, heading out early to trade strength and sweat for a paycheck. The routine runs deep. The cycle continues.

By most standards, he’s a good man.

Sure, maybe he drank a little too much last night, spent too long sitting in the garage with the radio on and the door cracked. But who doesn’t need to blow off a little steam after a long day?

He hasn’t been to church in years, he just doesn’t have time or the desire. At least not a church building. His church is his secret fishing hole or his deer stand.

But by the world’s standards, he is a good, Christian man.

He works hard and doesn’t quit. He shows up on time, works all the overtime he can, and fixes what’s broken. He puts food on the table and keeps the lights on.

He’s the welder, the mechanic, the lineman, the factory worker. The kind of man this country quietly depends on — blue-collar, working-class, no-nonsense. A man raised to believe that if you work hard, respect your elders, and believe in “the Man Upstairs,” you’ll be alright.

He abides by what his father taught him; what a man is.

He’s generally conservative. He loves his country. He even believes in “Jesus”.

He passes the rites of manhood onto his son—“work hard, show respect, protect women” (but you of course don’t have to marry them before you ogle or sleep with them, that’s what guys do).

Sometimes on these rides to work he reflects on his life, the things he’s done, the partying, the friends, the trouble they got into. He looks fondly back on the memories, but sometimes he senses a small nagging in his heart about it.

“Hey man, what guy hasn’t done it?”, he tells himself. “God understands”.

When he was a young boy, he went to church often. More for the free cookies and play time in Sunday school than anything. His grandma who took him actually read and believed her Bible, so he’s good riding into heaven on her spiritual coat tails.

He even prays sometimes to this “Jesus” he has crafted in his mind over the years. Not the one that holds you accountable for sin, the star-spangled, Bible Belt version who is basically a white, middle-eastern hippie that just loves everyone and everything and has no job other than to make us happy.

Ticket punched.

Still, his conscience nags at him from time to time, though it is today more seared than Trump’s $1,000 ketchup-slathered steak.

He rolls his bloodshot eyes at the thought of the “Jesus freak” guy at work who keeps inviting him to church, cranks up the radio to get his mind off of it, his favorite Jelly Roll song comes on—ah, conscience pacified.

“I guess there’s just some things you just can’t outrun

There ain’t no back pew in this truck, so I’m forced to sit in the front

And ain’t it funny how He’s working in mysterious ways?

H***, I skipped my share of sermons, so He brought one to this Chevrolet”

The “Christian man” sings through the truck speakers, validating the man’s justifications.

Anywhere and anything is “your church”. “Jesus” is a name tag to stick on whatever 1st commandment violation that floats your boat. And “Christian” is a title for anyone who says the sacred name.

These lyrics are not bad theology, per se — they’re honest confessions of spiritual emptiness. But without repentance and faith, they’re just psalms of the damned.

They show that many modern men know something’s wrong, but they don’t want the real Jesus — the one who demands they die to themselves.

I am not saying that if you are a Christian, you cannot enjoy Jelly Roll’s music. You have liberty in Christ brother, but please be wise with what you are allowing into your eyes and ears.

If you listen to Jelly Roll, that does not mean you are not a Christian, but it also does not mean you are one.

There are many faithful saints living in the Bible Belt today, but just because you live there, does not mean you are one of them.

The question is, what does it mean to be a Christian?

Is simply saying you believe in Jesus and then living your life as you please enough to save your soul from eternal damnation?

The modern American ethos, at least from a working-class conservative standpoint, tries to hang onto a Christian identity.

But what does that really mean?

The First Great Awakening

At one time our great nation was decidedly Christian, with the efforts and convictions of groups like the Puritans, the Huguenots, the Congregationalists, and Baptists of old.

They didn’t just wear t-shirts that said “faith, family, freedom”, they lived those principles and shaped our cultural identity.

But this gave way to much of the same problem we see in the Bible Belt south and rural America at large—nominalism.

Still held up as one of the most intelligent men to ever walk on Uncle Sam’s soil, Jonathan Edwards noticed this problem in his time as well.

Before the Great Awakening in the mid-18th century, Edwards lamented and went to war with the cultural Christian dad of his time.

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