Rich Mullins Would Be 61 Today – He Was the Master of the One-Liner

Last updated on: October 21, 2016 at 7:26 am by Tim Suttle

Rich Mullins Would Be 61 Today – He Was the Master of the One-Liner 2016-10-21T07:26:00-06:00 Tim Suttle

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Rich Mullins had such a low tolerance for B.S. I’m convinced that, had he lived longer into the digital age, Rich would still never have become a blogger. He wouldn’t be on snapchat or instagram, and there’s no way he would’ve been on Facebook. But twitter? I could see that.

Rich was a master of the one-liner. Good songwriters work with an incredible economy of words. Rich knew how to craft great one-liners and how to set them up. He was also not short on opinions. Every time I was around Rich I felt like he was constantly apologizing for the last time he saw people and offended them. I love that.

Rich had very strong political opinions, too. He had these great zingers, like: “Democracy isn’t necessarily bad politics, its just bad math.” Or, “Lord, save me from Washington.” I poked around to find a few of his great thoughts on politics and copied them below. If you get a minute to hop on Youtube & listen to a few songs, I promise it’ll do your heart good.

“I think the big problem is that, as Christians, we forgot that our identity is wrapped up in Christ and for a long time we bought into the illusion that the will of the masses would be more generous and more benevolent than the will of one dictator. But democracy isn’t necessarily bad politics, its just bad math. A thousand corrupt minds are just as evil as one corrupt mind.”

“I think for a long time I believed that there would be political solutions because, growing up in America, you endure several political campaigns and these people make promises and they say, we will do this and we will do that and you believe them because you don’t know any better. And I really believed for a long time that this was all going to work. And I thank God now for Richard Nixon and for Gerald Ford and for all those people who betrayed any confidence that the American people could have in their government who said that the leadership of this country is not accountable to the people who elect them and who made so clear what we now know that no government works. And I wanted the government to work.”

“See, I think a lot of my songs are really political. I think nobody gets it, but it’s hard for me to divide up my politics and my religious convictions. There’s something offensive to me about having an American flag in a church building. When the CIA pretended to be missionaries and caused trouble in Chile so that all missionaries were kicked out, I think that makes the United States the enemy of the kingdom of God. I think a government that requires 18-year-old boys to register for the draft is anti-life. See, all the pro-lifers, they only think life is sacred if you are a fetus. I agree that life is sacred to fetuses, but I also think it’s sacred to 18-year-olds. Where were you people when Nixon was in the White House? When Lyndon Johnson was escalating the war? Not that I necessarily think that everybody has to be a pacifist; I don’t. But it does seem funny to me that so many people who are anti-abortion are pro-capital punishment. So many people who are anti-capital punishment are pro-abortion.”

“I believe it’s better for any organization to go the wrong way together than to go different ways separately.”

“I’m very hurt at the apathy in the church. I’m very hurt over the determination of the government to destroy life and its not simply over the abortion issue. Anyone who has any awareness at all of Wounded Knee, not only the first Wounded Knee but what happened there, what 20 years ago, whatever. You kinda go, there can be no doubt that governments that are controlled by men are without exception anti-life and anti-Christ.”

“Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect little wife and your perfect little children in your beautiful little house where you have no gays or minority groups anywhere near you. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken.”

“The other thing is, as a Christian musician, because you’re playing to an audience that is made up of a lot of people who have a very diverse kind of conviction… There are people who really believe that you must be a Republican in order to be a Christian. There are people who really believe that you must take an abstinence position. There are people who are very anti-war, and they think you must be anti-war. And there are all these people who take all these different things about what you as a Christian are supposed to be. So you end up spending a lot of time trying to defend why you are not this or why you are not that. And what I have realized is boy, I am not accountable to everyone that I meet on the street. I need to be accountable somewhere, and this is driving me crazy.”

“I am very hurt at the apathy in the church. I am very hurt over the determination of the government to destroy life… I do long for heaven. Someday God will destroy injustice. Someday there will be a judgment because we have a loving and a forgiving Father. Maybe we will survive it… I enjoy the idea of a corporate identity. When I come into church I am no longer Rich Mullins, a music education student. I am no longer Rich Mullins a guy who grew up in Indiana. I am no longer Rich Mullins a guy who has a record contract. All of a sudden I am a member of the kingdom of God.”

“Why do the nations rage? Why do they plot and scheme? Their bullets can’t stop the prayers we pray in the name of the Prince of Peace.”

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