Steve Grand kills Jesus, Lil Nas X kills Satan
The Cross vs the Resurrection
I cried, “Who nailed him there? This child of peace and mercy?
“Who nailed him there? Come and face me like a man!
“Who nailed him there?” Then the crowd began to mock me.
I cried, “Oh my God, I just don’t understand!”
Then I turned and saw the hammer in my hand.
-Ray Boltz, “The Hammer”
I knelt at the front of the church, tears streaming down my cheeks. My mind was full of all the bad things I’d done that week. Every mean thought I’d had, every cruel word I’d spoken, every sexual feeling I’d had, it was all sin. And each one was a strike of the whip, a swing of the hammer, a thorn in the crown.
My sins put Jesus on the cross. I was at fault. I crucified Him.
The first time I heard Ray Boltz’s song “The Hammer”, that last line of the chorus hit me like a punch to the gut: “I turned and saw the hammer in my hand.” Years later, when I learned that Boltz came out as gay, I wondered if the beauty and pain in his lyrics came out of the years of hiding who he was and hating himself.
Now I am just a man, but me and Jesus, we weren’t just friends
And — And now he’s dead, and now he’s dead, and now he’s dead!
I pushed that thorny crown a little deeper in his head,
I gripped that rosary, tied around his lifeless neck,
Jesus…
