Charles Brammall
Many decades ago I dumped, in my immaturity, fear, and in my idiocy, a Godly, perfect girl. Committed to holiness, a zealous relationally empathic evangelist, she was a clever, empathic and warm woman who folks found it safe to open up to quickly. (Almost to the same extent as my wonderful wife😉).
She was a Bible lover, truster and obeyer- a lady earnestly committed to keeping in step with God’s Spirit of holiness. Having been dumped by me, she was devastated, crushed. I So was I. It was the most horrible experience I’d ever been through.
My brother came and sat on my bed as I wept uncontrollably, and said the best thing in the world anyone could possibly have said: “It really sucks doesn’t it.” It was by far the most existentially scarifying thing I had experienced. The wound felt mortal. And I wasn’t even the dumpee, but merely the dumped.
I constantly enjoying listening through (Octogenarian + 4) Dylan’s back-catalogue. I imbibe the Hibbert Minnesota Jewish boy’s tunes on an intoxicating never ending loop. Almost all of his lyrics, with few exceptions, are about 1 of 3 things:
- They are nonsense doggerel songs- think “Love and Theft”’s extraordinarily lame oblation “Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum”,
- Love songs, and
- Breakup songs, from the perspective of both the dumper and the dumped.
And Bob has frequently been dumper- one can tell from his lyrics. He is tight lipped however about which girls, and the circumstances. But the possibilities are:
Echo Helstrom, Suze Rotolo (arguably his deepest love), & 1st wife Sara Dylan (about whom the beautiful “Sara” is written).
Add to these 2nd spouse Carolyn Dennis, fiance Ruth Tyrangiel (whom Bob introduced to the shocked Budokhan audience as “this is my fiancé Ruth”- a rare revelation of personal details for him), & Chris O’Dell.
Other contenders are Sally Kirkland, proposee Mavis Staples (US R&B and Gospel belter & civil rightsactivist), and Suzie Pullen. This reluctant executioner of his own romance is often conflicted by the anticipated “freedom” and severing lover’s ties, set against the stubborn ache that followed.
We could label this part of his tale “The Gospel According to a Wounded Harmonica”, as some of his most achingly gorgeous breakup lines pierce deeply and ontologically….
When Bob breaks a heart, he often smashes his own ticker in the process. There’s a sly irony in the fellow’s composition.
The chap who walks away expecting release discovers that the road out of love leads straight back into the labyrinthine maze of memory. His narrators often sound like someone who has read the last page of a book in advance (like my wife does). He seems confident that he knows the ending, only to find, upon living it, that the sinistre plot keeps rewriting itself.
Take the droll, laconic “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”, pregnant and dripping with irony, sarcasm and wit. (It was the basis of my speech at my 40th party). The lines zap and crackle like a telegram of liberation:
“We never did too much talkin’ anyway…”
The man’s vocals are brisk, even jaunty— a farewell with a nudge and a wink. Yet beneath the bravado, there’s the melancholy of Ecclesiastes:
“The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride.”
“I’m Movin’ On” masks the slow corrosion of Bob’s confidence and self worth. The relief he anticipated (this clean scalpelling of ties), is already infected with second thoughts, audible in the weary drawl delivering the sentiments.
It’s the dumper’s paradox: one desperately expects, hopes and prays, deeply desires and anticipates- to feel a load lifted. But your hands still smell the burning pain of the rope you’ve just cut, which’s also cut you.
“You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” is a genuine and disarming mid-flight confession that he didn’t expect to find himself making:
“I could stay with you forever and never realise the time.”
It’s almost Augustinian- the idea that the heart is restless until it finds rest in love, even the love you’ve chosen to abandon. His narrator is analogous to the Bard’s comedic characters, who, engineering their own escape, only discover that liberty without the beloved is merely exile. Dylan’s dumper persona reveals the hollowness of anticipated freedom.
Think the Biblical parallel of Jonah: galloping breathlessly in the opposite direction, only to find that the very act of flight lands you in the belly of regret. And in “Sara”, if you open your ears up wide, you can hear the dumper already yearningly grieving the loss he’s not yet fully suffered.
He recalls moments of intimacy with almost Eucharistic solemnity— the “Methodist bells”, the composition like a votive offering— as though confessing to a future in which those memories will be a burden weightier than the freedom he’s chosen.
He is Homer’s Odysseus leaving Calypso’s island: the wind at his back, the sea in his favour, but the heart still moored to the shore.
Theologically, Dylan’s position is profoundly Pauline:
“For the good that I would, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do” (Rom 7:19). As the dumper, he wills to be free but finds himself enslaved to memory; wills to walk away, but keeps turning to look over his shoulder at the burning, smoking wreck of a relationship.
His art captures that most human of ironies— the decision we make to heal ourselves, only to discover that the healing process requires the very thing we have cast aside.
In a single continuous essayic arc, Bob’s lyrics (and life), shift from him as the dumped, to him as the dumper, and finally the reconciler— each section cross-linked with Bible, Virgil, and Shakespeare. It is effectively a clean literary triptych.
But what of dumping… God?
There are some who believe Bob has done this, but I happen not to. God certainly hasn’t dumped him:
“Underneath are the everlasting Arms… I will never leave you nor forsake you”.
Dylan’s in good Hands. Even if he no longer believes in those Hands, (but I think a powerful argument can be mounted to suggest he does). God certainly believes in Bob. And adores him. He’s a big fan (probably not quite as big as me). And gave up his sole Child to receive the death penalty for him, and forgive and adopt him as a doted-upon child.
But what of ME dumping God, and… Jesus’ death?
Imagine a portley little brown haired boy Chaz, Tilly Polly and cheerful, at Sydney’s picturesque North Palm Beach, just under the shadow of pretty Bennelong Lighthouse, 1972, Sunday School picnic. 8 years old, I’ve drifted out past the pounding breakers, and the current turns on me. Tsunami-like waves pound me. I scream blue murder, mortified, but the gale swallows my breath, silencing it.
I wrestle the tug’o’war rip, quickly losing ground. It mercilessly, effortlessly hauls me faster and further out, my arms lead-like. I’m going under. I’m going to, die (1 of 5 times in my life I’ve been close to death- God is good all the time).
Then I see him— Mr Golling, Neil, my 6’8” Sunday School Superintendent, tearing into the angry surf towards me, each stroke of his Freestyle hauling him about a metre and 1/2 through the sea. He plunges and disappears, resurfaces, swims… hard, and tackles the waves head-on.
He reaches me after what seems like days, locks his enormous arm under mine, and hauls me effortlessly back to the sand. I cough brine, gasping for air like a landed fish, and stumble up Palm’s fine golden sand. I’m alive.
But he’s not. (not real story)
He collapsed before I reached shore. The rescue took everything from Golling. I stand there in shock as they cover his body. His blood mixes with the tide.
Weeks later I’m at his funeral. People talk about his courage. His Dad cries. Someone asks me to share what he did for me. I shrug and say, “I didn’t ask him to save me. I’m moving on.”
Yeah right! In your dreams.
That is what dumping God looks like, in the light of… Jesus’ death.
Without the death of Christ, rejecting God could be brushed off as a personal decision— changing beliefs, trying to take my life in a new direction. But when God Himself dives into history, lives my life from the inside, and dies to pull me out of the rip current of my sin… walking away isn’t just a lifestyle change;
It’s rejecting the One who BOUGHT me. With His own LIFE. The death of Jesus makes it all sort of personal and uncomfortable. I can’t say that old dumper-boyfriend chestnut “It’s not You, it’s me”. Because the crucifixion says:
“It WAS you, and I came for you ANYWAY.”
can’t claim moral neutrality in dumping the Immortal One. Because the death of God- God the Son- is either the most embarrassing, piteous and foolish waste of time in history… or the most outrageously illogical and inexplicable act of love I’ve ever spurned.
And yet- and here’s the staggering mercy- Niel Golling is alive again.
Jesus rose. The same man I abandoned is still offering me His lifeline. The same scars that prove my guilt also guarantee my welcome. I don’t need to negotiate or clean myself up for Him. I just need to stop walking away from the One who refuses to stop free styling towards me.
Because in the end, those scars will either be the evidence I rejected the Life Saver, or the proof that He forgave me.
A close and very dear family member who I adore, once identified as a Christian. They were committed and regular. It seemed that they understand the Gospel clearly, and had a mind which enquired of God. They were a fine example to their peers, and even dreamt once that they were evangelising a demon, and he got converted! Now they have dumped God, and identify as a “Secular Humanist”.
We have had multiple friendly and probing conversations, and I have developed a theory. I suspect this loved one has dumped God because they never a relationship with Him. Never thought of Him as a person, with person-ness, a character, person-hood, and person-ality.
So from their POV they hadn’t been in a relationship with someone, because there wasn’t anyone there. Christianity for them was a targum of 1 to 3 things:
- a set of ethics or morals by which to live,
- what their parents did, and/or
- a Philosophy of life, or world view.
So… the effect of Jesus’ death on dumping God? Don’t do it. I’ve got everything to lose, and nothing to gain. Everyone loses. There are no winners. Just like divorce.
And… He died so that I don’t HAVE to dump God- there’s no need. He’s the best of Bosses and Fatherly Makers. Of Provident Teacher-Servants. The best of Sacrificial Minister/Pastors, and Preachers.
I beg you, please, urge, cajole and yearn for you- don’t be an idiot like me all those decades ago.
Prayers:
Our gracious God and loving Heavenly Father,
Thank You that Jesus died so that I don’t have to dump God, because there’s no need. You’re the best of Bosses and Fatherly Makers. Of Provident Teacher-Servants. The best of Sacrificial Minister/Pastors, and Preachers.
Please help me not to be an idiot like Charles was all those decades ago.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen.
Dear Heavenly Father,
Please soften the hearts, minds, and spirits of my Jewish, non-Christian and Muslim friends and loved ones, to understand that they’re not in a relationship with You. And that You are well and truly there.
For Jesus’ name’s sake,
Amen.
Dear Father,
Please help our loved ones’ “Christianity” not to be just be some combination of what their parents did, a Philosophy of life or world view, and a set of ethics or morals to live by. Please help it to be a personal relation with You, by Your Son, through Your Spirit.
For the sake of Jesus’ name,
Amen.
Image: AI Image by Charles Brammall