Sinners, Saints, and How God Used The Blues To Build A Better Me

Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan’s new film, Sinners, is gritty, profound, and has a killer soundtrack. Right now it’s sitting at 97% on the film-rating website Rotten Tomatoes—on the same shelf as The Godfather, Jaws, and Good Will Hunting.

Sinners blew me away. And if you can believe it, God used it to teach me about the power of diligence, the hard work required to chase excellence, and why innovation matters.

Set in the Jim Crow era of the early 1930s, Sinners follows the story of twin brothers, both played by Michael B. Jordan, as they return to their hometown in the Deep South from a stint in Chicago. With some cash and a truck full of liquor, they secure an abandoned mill as the spot for their new juke joint. But when an Irish vampire shows up and starts picking off the party-goers one by one, what starts out as fun becomes a fight for survival.

Sitting in that dark theater, engrossed in this fictional world, God reminded me that actual people lived this life (minus the blood-sucking undead, of course). Many of those men, women, and children, the direct descendants of slaves, nurtured and grew a deep faith in God, despite oppression, marginalization, and the constant threat of violence (much of it, sadly, coming at the hands of people who claimed to follow the same God). In a world obsessed with comfort, that type of faith under pressure inspires me. Throughout history, God consistently uses that ingredient to grow his church.

Sinners is set to a stunning blues soundtrack, which is what pulled me in. The music has mystified me for as long as I can remember. (I’m fully aware that, being a white kid from rural Kentucky, my love for the blues doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but here we are.)

There is a rawness to the blues that is undeniable. It somehow manages to give voice to despair without losing its grip on hope. It’s built on the idea that an injustice acknowledged might not take away the pain, but it can at least steal away some of its cutting edge. From the bottom, the only direction to look is up. And even when He isn’t mentioned by name, I believe God is woven into the blues as much as 12-bar chord progressions and wailing guitar solos.

I’m especially crazy about the landmark blues artists who were recording in the same era that Sinners is set in—the 1920s and 30s. Despite daily racism and injustice, so many of them sing about Jesus, the hope of heaven, and enduring because Christ did the same. It’s not theoretical music. It’s refined in the actual fire of hard living, and what’s left is pure. Like the music or not, there is a holiness to the blues that you rarely find elsewhere.

I find God in the blues. It actually makes sense, when you realize at least one third of the Psalms in the Bible (ancient songs written for worship) classify as laments (just another name for the blues) and God says things like He’s “close to the brokenhearted” (Psalm 34:8). This music doesn’t just fill my ears, it lifts my spirit.

Sinners was great. But the real lives of committed followers of Jesus—I’ll call them saints, even if they aren’t enshrined in Rome—are even better. Below are three real blues artists, who lived and died well before I was born, that God is using to build a better me. (And, of course, there will be a link to a playlist at the end. You’re welcome.)

BLIND WILLIE JOHNSON - DILIGENCE

By far, my favorite bluesman is Blind Willie Johnson. Born in Texas and blinded as a child (legend says his step-mother threw lye in his face in the heat of an argument with his father), BWJ spent most of his life without his sight. But that didn’t stop him from becoming one of the most accomplished slide guitarists of all time. His influence is, honestly, incalculable.

You’d think a man forced to live life without his sight would have plenty to complain about. But don’t go looking for that attitude in his music. BWJ recorded only 30 songs in his lifetime, but every single one speaks to his faith—they call out the goodness of God, his faithfulness, and the need to keep pressing on.

BWJ never hit it big. He pulled the ends together by busking on street corners and doing a little preaching. But the music he created has lived on well beyond his 48 years. In fact, when the Voyager space probe was launched in 1977, one of his songs was included, chosen to represent the peak of human creativity should any other life forms find it floating around out there.

God used Blind Willie to teach me about diligence. Recently, a change at my job meant I had to learn an entirely new skill set, after spending the last five years mastering the old one. I’m in my 40s. New things, especially around technology, don’t come naturally to me anymore. But when I wanted to give up, I thought about that blind kid teaching himself to play guitar—and using his voice to make much of God, instead of complaining about his own station. It humbled me, hard…and I pressed on.

Something like 20 years passed between Willie’s unjust blinding and the first of his landmark recording sessions. For a man of diligence, that meant two decades of practice, persistence, and pushing forward, despite his circumstances, to find the goodness of God among the rubble.

It reminds me of the words of scripture, which insist that persistence does pay off in the end.

And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. (Galatians 6:9)

It’s not a cliche: the blind often have the best vision.

START HERE: If you’re only going to listen to one recording, it has to be Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground. The story goes that the song had lyrics detailing Christ’s crucifixion and burial, but BWJ was too overcome with emotion to get them out. What he did manage to record is one of the landmark songs in blues history—and the one that was included on the Voyager space probe.

DEEPER DIVE: Among my favorites are God Don’t Never Change, Trouble Will Soon Be Over, and I’m Gonna Run to the City of Refuge. Each song, with Blind Willie’s trademark vocal and slide guitar, points to a hope that lies far beyond the external circumstances of life on earth. It might be hard now, but one day, “sorrow will have an end.” You can count on it.

SKIP JAMES - EXCELLENCE

Excellence opens doors.

The biblical leader, Nehemiah, was born in exile. Conquered by Babylon well before he was born, the Israelites had been living away from their homeland, and under oppression, for some 70 years.

As a young man, Nehemiah was chosen to serve in the court of the foreign king. Though the scripture doesn’t say it explicitly, it’s natural to assume our hero handled this job with excellence because, when he makes a strange request of his employer, the king surprisingly agrees. Brokenhearted at the state of his decimated homeland, Nehemiah asks for leave from his position to lead a band of returning Israelites to rebuild the protective wall around the capital city, Jerusalem. Not only does the king agree, but he also provides supplies for the mission.

Nehemiah’s mission was a success. Some 500 years later, Jesus would walk through the very same gates Nehemiah helped repair and restore.

Bluesman, Skip James, has an oddly similar story. Born in 1902 in segregated Mississippi, his mother worked on a plantation while his father was a bootlegger, abandoning the family when Skip was young. Skip showed exceptional musical ability, but in the Jim Crow South, there were few options for that to lead anywhere. So James fell into his father’s footsteps, working laborer jobs supplemented by bootlegging, gambling, and pimping.

Self-taught, James developed a distinctive musical style all his own—he tuned his guitar unlike anyone else, sang in an eerie falsetto vocal, and became one of the most distinguished finger-pickers of all time. He later added the piano and organ to his repertoire. If Blind Willie Johnson is one side of the coin, Skip James definitely represents the other.

Discovered by a talent scout in the early 1930s, it seemed like the music business might finally pay off. James recorded 19 songs for Paramount Records, but they were released just as the Great Depression was putting a stranglehold on the United States. They sold poorly, and the music dream died. Instead, James turned to God.

Sometime in James’ youth, his father reemerges. Having given up bootlegging, he had gone through a personal reformation that led him to become a preacher. Giving up the dream of the blues, James led the choir at his father’s church. He later became an ordained minister himself.

For 30 years, that’s how the story continued, until James’ recordings re-emerged in a folk and blues revival during the 1960s. While they were highly regarded, music historians and fans assumed the author was long dead. Not so.

James was “discovered” by music enthusiasts while recovering from a surgery in a hospital in Mississippi. Once better, he was whisked away to the prestigious Newport Folk Festival. Performing publicly for the first time in three decades, his music blew people away. It had a long lag time, but the excellence James had developed as a young man was finally paying off.

James’ life would never be the same. For the next five years, he kicked it into overdrive. He played concerts, cut so many records that they’re still being discovered and released, and became a living legend among music fans.

Unlike Blind Willie, who only wrote and performed songs with a gospel edge, Skip dabbled in everything—from traditionals, to spirituals, to gospel, to original recordings, going after all of it with his distinctive style. Once you hear a Skip James song, you won’t forget it.

Like many of the artists we consider masters today, James didn’t find initial success. But that wasn’t an indicator of the excellence of his craft. Culture just needed time to catch up. Skip’s life reminds me not to grade myself, or my work, on its initial reception. Instead, keep aiming for excellence, and loosen your grip on the controls.

Yesterday, I planted flowering bushes around my house that likely won’t bloom for years. I honestly hope that I’m not around to see them, as my growing family hopes to move. But those plants represented the more excellent choice, something with lag time that will eventually pay off for someone, even if it’s not me.

Thankfully for Skip James, his excellence was recognized in his lifetime. But recognition isn’t necessary for something to be good. That’s a lesson I can’t learn enough—as a husband, father, creative, and writer.

“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.” (Colossians 3:23)

Skip James was a builder who labored through excellence to leave behind a musical legacy. Makes sense, as “Skip” was only a nickname. The name given to him in that segregated Mississippi hospital on the day he was born? Nehemiah.

START HERE: Hard Time Killin’ Floor Blues is probably Skip’s most recognized song, especially as a cover that was featured in the Coen Brothers’ masterpiece, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” The song feels like it could have been ripped from the biblical books of Job or Lamentations, describing the difficulty of hard days and the inability of anyone to find heaven on earth.

DEEPER DIVE: Be Ready When He Comes and Jesus Is a Mighty Good Leader are two of James’ most overtly faith-driven songs—one a warning cry to prepare for the return of Christ, and the other an encouragement to follow Jesus today. One of my favorites, Cypress Grove Blues, from the original 1931 recording sessions, proved to be quite prophetic as it echoes the words of Galatians: “the good book declares you got to reap just what you sow.” When you sow excellence, you will reap it, even if it takes longer than you anticipated.

WASHINGTON PHILLIPS - INNOVATION

As the 1920s were coming to a close, an itinerant jackleg preacher—someone who isn’t ordained, but preaches to crowds of people in the streets or in storefronts—walked into a makeshift studio outside Dallas, Texas, and recorded 18 songs for Columbia Records. The producer, unable to recognize the instrument the preacher carried, noted it on the recording documents as a “novelty accompaniment.” 100 years later, the exact nature of the instrument remains a mystery.

That preacher was Washington Phillips, and I can guarantee you’d never heard anything quite like him. His instruments, which he likely made himself, consisted of shallow wooden boxes, which he had strung with discarded violin strings. Existing somewhere between a dulcimer and a zither, a recently unearthed newspaper article from 1907 revealed Phillip’s name for his creations: manzarenes.

Washington Phillips might just be the most sincere artist ever to put his music down on tape. Those 18 songs—two of which are lost to history—tell the story of a man with no education or formal training, but who was driven by a love for God that surpassed everything else around him. Born only 15 years after the close of the Civil War, Wash Phillips walked through the darkest days of Jim Crow and segregation in the hard-scrabble land of East Texas. And yet his music has a lightness and hope that nothing on Christian radio today can rival. That’s because his hope was built out of necessity and survival. It had roots.

There’s something magical about Washington Phillips’ music. It sounds like nothing else because he played it on instruments no one else had ever created. That’s innovation. And that’s why, despite not being a household name, a century after his recordings, his songs have been covered by everyone from music legends like Ralph Stanley and Mavis Staples, to current artists as diverse as Gillian Welch, Vince Gill, and Mogwai.

It almost goes without saying, but there’s something inherently beautiful (and gospel-centric) about a new instrument created from the discarded remnants of old ones—something new resurrected from the shattered remains of the old. Only an instrument like that could lead to sounds and songs unlike anything else produced before or after it. It gives me hope that when I feel broken, discarded, or washed up, I need to keep pressing forward; keep taking risks; keep trying new things. My new song might be just around the corner.

“Oh sing to the LORD a new song, for he has done marvelous things … Sing praises to the LORD with the lyre, with the lyre and the sound of melody!” (Psalm 98:1,5)

If Washington Phillips, despite all he faced, could incarnate the words of this scripture, allowing God to put a new song on his lips…then maybe I can too.

START HERE: My all-time favorite Wash Phillips song is Take Your Burden to the Lord and Leave It There. It might sound lame, but I can’t tell you how many times this song has released a pressure valve in my life. It’s a gentle reminder that I’m not actually in control…and that’s a very good thing.

DEEPER DIVE: What Are They Doing In Heaven Today is Phillips’ most covered song, painting a hopeful vision of a future where pain, suffering, and sin meet their end. Lift Him Up That’s All simplifies the work of the church to its most common denominator: just make much of Jesus, while Denomination Blues is a clever take-down of the hypocrisy present in every iteration of the church. It ends with the reminder that, above all, “you better have Jesus.”

Willie’s diligence pushes me to stay the course for the long haul. Skip’s excellence teaches me to give nothing less than my best. Wash’s innovation inspires me to try new things. And together, their persistent faith reminds me who the real hero of the story is—the God each of these men was chasing.

That’s more than enough words from me. It’s time to listen to the music. Jump to the playlist I curated on Apple Music or Spotify, and see if these turn-of-the-century artists inspire you the same way they do me. Maybe, like me, you’ll find some heroes who don’t look, think, or live like you do.

The kingdom of God is wide. And sometimes, it’s blue.

(Photo Credit: Warner Bros. via IMDb)

Disclaimer: This article is 100% human-generated.

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