It's nobody's fault but mine
Nobody's fault but mine
If I don't read it, my soul will be lost
Nobody’s Fault But Mine is one of Willie Johnson’s most iconic songs. This claim is verifiable by a simple search for artists who have offered the world their own version the song, such as Ry Cooder, The Blind Boys of Alabama, and Ben Harper. By far and away the most famous band to record a song by the same name is Led Zeppelin. To be sure, the Led Zeppelin version of the song bares the least resemblance to Johnson’s recording. Although, if you look hard enough, you can find a live recording of Robert Plant and Jimmy Page playing something essentially faithful to Johnson’s original work.
If you were looking for a fun and light tune, you will need to look elsewhere. If you have made it this far through the journey of Willie Johnson’s music, it should come as no surprise the song has some relationship to death and judgement. In this particular case, there is no obvious hopeful element to it, instead what you have are explicit statements of loss and despair.
I have a Bible in my home
I have a Bible in my home
If I don't read it, my soul will be lost
At the centre of Johnson’s version of the song is the idea that if he doesn’t read the Bible, his soul will be lost. This idea is not always present in other renditions of the song. For example, the Zeppelin version whilst maintaining the soul talk, does not mention the Bible and introduces lines about the devil, a monkey and a gong. Others, in their versions of the song maintain the distinctly Christian theme but expand the emphasis beyond reading the Bible to prayer and following the teachings of Jesus, or in Cooder’s version, the teaching of Jesus and Buddha. Johnson, the man who cannot see with his eyes, maintains the sole focus on reading.
For Johnson, it seems that reading the Bible is of ultimate importance. Perhaps a good way to receive what he is saying in the song is to think about what the Bible might be to him, a gift from God. The gracious God of the Bible gave of himself for us and our salvation. Many but not all Christians believe this grace can be rejected. How might this grace be rejected? From the song’s perspective, it might look like having the gift of the Bible in your home but never reading it. Maybe you could be excused if you did not know how to read. That excuse probably does not hold up if your father, mother and sister all went to the effort of teaching you how to read. What else could you say but “It’s nobody’s fault but mine.”
And, sister, she taught me how to read
Sister, she taught me how to read
If I don't read it, my soul will be lost
Nobody's fault but mine
I could see the virtue in owning up to your own mistakes but I still wondered if there was more that I may have been missing from this song, something beyond the warning of woe to you who do not read your Bible. Enter, 90s rapper turned actor, Ice Cube.
By some strange turn of events, just days before I sat down to write the reflection on this song, I had the opportunity to watch a movie with my teenage daughter. I am grateful to have a daughter who is up for watching a serious film with me. That being so, she is not always in the mood for such a film and from what I could tell this most recent occasion was a time we needed something lighter-hearted. By some strange turn of events, the 2008 movie “First Sunday”, starring Ice Cube and Tracy Morgan, came up in my suggestions. Even though the film only enjoys a 12% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, nevertheless my daughter and I enjoyed it.
Although I generally prefer art that takes some work to appreciate, this film had a simple and somewhat predictable story. It centred on two young men who had been dealt difficult hands in the game of life. Growing up without fathers, they now struggled to hold down jobs and through some unfortunate turn of events needed to come up with some money quickly. Basically, they found themselves in what they felt an impossible situation and resorted to doing something they first considered unthinkable, robbing the local church at gun point.
I suspect that no one reading this will have any concerns about spoilers when it comes to this movie, so I am going to go ahead and give away the film’s climactic moment. Just as Ice Cube’s character gets the money he was after, an elderly church woman, no longer afraid of dying, gets up and confronts him. She tells him a truth he did not want to hear, that he had been “blaming everybody but the one person responsible”.
The truth is that there are a whole lot of people in the world that are victims of terrible circumstances. Blind Willie Johnson’s life is just one example of that reality. Most of us still have choices we need to make in our daily lives and even when those choices feel limited, they are a gift. I do not want to speak too flippantly about such matters nor lack compassion for those who feel like they are having to make decisions between bad and worse. However, I do want to apprehend the wisdom of the elderly church lady and Johnson himself; it seems hope can be found in the confession that it’s nobody’s fault but mine and it’s from the belly of the fish and the bottom of the sea that we find the way back to life.
Despite our circumstances, we can own our mistakes and realise that blaming others and assuming victim status is not going to help us. With this posture, you must hold onto hope, keep persevering and remember to Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning.