Dylan's Evocative Declaration of Faith: I Believe In You

Warfield Theater, November 8 1979
Photo courtesy Bill Pagel

Bob Dylan’s “I Believe in You” stands as one of the most unguarded and quietly brave songs of his career. The third track on his Slow Train Coming album, it was written during his much-debated Christian period. It is not a sermon, a provocation, or a theological argument. It is a plainspoken, vulnerable, and resolute confession.

What makes the song stand out is its emotional temperature. Dylan does not present faith as triumphal or conquering, but as isolating and costly. The speaker is misunderstood, gently ostracized, even driven “a thousand miles from home.” The resistance he encounters feels social rather than abstract—frowns, closed doors, exile. Faith here is not rewarded with belonging; it creates distance and isolation. And yet the song refuses bitterness. Instead, it offers steadiness.

Musically and lyrically, Dylan strips away irony. The language is simple, almost childlike, but never naïve. Repetition becomes devotion: “I believe in you” is less a declaration of certainty than an act of persistence. Belief is something maintained—through tears and laughter, winter and summer, when being outnumbered or forsaken.  

What unsettled many listeners in 1979 was not merely Dylan’s Christianity, but his sincerity. Dylan had long thrived on masks, ambiguity, and reinvention. Here, he risks directness. The song’s power lies in that risk. It asks nothing of the listener except to witness a man choosing faith over approval.

The issue some Dylan followers may have had with this song, and his overt Gospel period in general, was this straightforwardness that didn't require any deciphering. It was all on the table, no sleight of hand in the lyrics. 

In retrospect, “I Believe in You” was not really an anomaly. For years he repeatedly incorporated spiritual themes in his work. (There are countless Biblical references in John Wesley Harding alone.) This song reveals Dylan’s lifelong preoccupation with commitment—ethical, artistic, spiritual—and the loneliness such commitment can entail. Whether one shares the belief itself is beside the point. The song endures because it honors the human cost of conviction, and the quiet courage it takes to say, simply and without apology: I believe.

For some, the problem was Jesus, who once said, "If the world hates you, know that it has hated Me before it hated you." The visceral public rejection (by some) of this Gospel phase in Dylan's career corresponded with the rejection of his new Señor. Dylan's response to this rejection is detailed in the song "Solid Rock" from his follow-up album Saved. "Well, I'm hanging on to a solid rock." 

Dylan performed "I Believe In You" 259 times from 1979 to 2009.

They ask me how I feel

And if my love is real

And how I know I’ll make it through

And they, they look at me and frown

They’d like to drive me from this town

They don’t want me around

’Cause I believe in you

They show me to the door

They say don’t come back no more

’Cause I don’t be like they’d like me to

And I walk out on my own

A thousand miles from home

But I don’t feel alone

’Cause I believe in you

I believe in you even through the tears and the laughter

I believe in you even though we be apart

I believe in you even on the morning after

Oh, when the dawn is nearing

Oh, when the night is disappearing

Oh, this feeling is still here in my heart

Don’t let me drift too far

Keep me where you are

Where I will always be renewed

And that which you’ve given me today

Is worth more than I could pay

And no matter what they say

I believe in you

I believe in you when winter turn to summer

I believe in you when white turn to black

I believe in you even though I be outnumbered

Oh, though the earth may shake me

Oh, though my friends forsake me

Oh, even that couldn’t make me go back

Don’t let me change my heart

Keep me set apart

From all the plans they do pursue

And I, I don’t mind the pain

Don’t mind the driving rain

I know I will sustain

’Cause I believe in you

Copyright © 1979 by Special Rider Music

Blues + Satire = Highway 61 Revisited

I vaguely recall an interview with Bob Dylan in which he was asked where his early songs came from. It may have been the 60 Minutes interview he did in 2004 in which he didn't know where "those songs" came from and that they were just "magically writen." He followed (if I recall correctly) by saying he could never write songs like that again. 

"Highway 61 Revisited" would certainly be one of "those songs."

"Highway 61 Revisited" is the title track of Dylan's landmark 1965 album of the same name. It's a high-energy, blues-rock number driven by a pounding rhythm, Mike Bloomfield's searing guitar, and Dylan's snarling, playful delivery. The song is structured as a series of five surreal, loosely connected vignettes (verses), each presenting an absurd or outrageous "problem" that gets resolved with the refrain: "Out on Highway 61."

Highway 61 itself is no ordinary road—it's the legendary "Blues Highway" running from here in Northern Minnesota, where Dylan was born and raised, down through the Mississippi Delta to New Orleans, tied to blues legends like Robert Johnson (who mythically sold his soul at the crossroads), the Great Migration of Black musicians, and American cultural contradictions. 

Tourists come from all over the world to travel the Blues Highway, staying a few days in Duluth and Hibbing before heading south. This fall we'll see the third caravan of Airstreamers, for example, traipsing through here, visiting the Historic Armory where young Dylan "felt a spark" while watching Buddy Holly perform, and stopping at the Nobel Prize winner's two childhood homes.  

As Manchester researcher David Leaver observes, music tourism is emotion-driven, shaped by pilgrimage, nostalgia, and heritage. Highway 61 embodies this pull. It traces the places where the blues were born, where artists learned their craft in juke joints, cotton fields, and river towns. To drive it is to move through stories of struggle and creativity, visiting sites that shaped lives, sounds, and identities—places where music is not just remembered, but felt.  

Dylan uses Highway 61 symbolically as a place where taboo, impossible, or extreme things happen—a back alley for humanity's darkest or most ridiculous impulses, free from conventional morality or societal norms. The verses blend biblical allusion, social satire, absurdity, and dark humor. 

The song begins with God commanding Abraham to "kill me a son" (referencing the Binding of Isaac in Genesis 22). Abraham protests ("Man, you must be puttin' me on"), but God threatens him. Abraham asks where, and God replies, "Out on Highway 61." The verse twists a sacred biblical story about a divine command into a roadside hit job. Is Dylan trivializing, or drawing attention to, one of the most significant people in Jewish (and Christian) history?  

Verse two features Georgia Sam (a down-and-out figure with a bloody nose), who complains to the Welfare Department about lacking clothes or a home. They dismiss him, so he heads to Highway 61—perhaps to escape bureaucracy or find rough justice.

"Mack the Finger" in verse three has bizarre surplus items (forty red, white, and blue shoestrings, a thousand non-ringing telephones) he needs to offload. "Louie the King" suggests dumping them on Highway 61. And verse four get's stranger still with disorienting family matters.

In the climax verse a bored gambler wants to start the "next world war" for kicks. His promoter cynically advises staging it like a spectacle: "Put some bleachers out in the sun / And have it on Highway 61." This has a clear anti-war/political edge, mocking Cold War madness and spectacle-driven destruction.

This whole notion of war as spectacle was illustrated when the U.S. started the bombing of Baghdad during the evening news in March 2003. And today's social media "coverage" seems to have become a whirlwind spiraling out of control.

Overall, the song itself is a wild, satirical panorama of human folly, violence, bureaucracy, materialism, and apocalypse. It critiques mid-1960s America—war, inequality, hypocrisy—while celebrating the raw energy of the blues. It's playful yet biting, blending sacred and profane, history and nonsense, in Dylan's signature surreal style. 

Many see it as a tribute to the blues tradition, Dylan's roots, and the idea that real truth (or madness) happens on the margins, "out on Highway 61." It's not a linear narrative but a fever-dream commentary on inevitability, absurdity, and where society's underbelly spills out. For sure Dylan highlights it as a signature song, having played it more than 2000 times in concerts around the world for over 55 years.

Lyrics Here

EdNote: Bob Dylan will be 85 this year. Duluth Dylan Fest will be celebrating the week of May 17 - 24. Join us for if you are able. Details Here.

Short Story Monday: Song of the Matrix (Version 5.0)

An AI Collaboration 

Perry Gustafson often felt as though his mind teetered under the weight of a thousand rickety tensions. It wasn’t madness, exactly, but a constant pressure—too many rules, too many judgments, too many voices ringing through the corridors of memory.

This evening he ducked into The Power Café, a narrow place on the corner that had once been a tailor’s shop. It now boasted a slogan in chalk script on the sandwich board outside: The Magic of Northern Italy. Inside, the reality was day-old biscotti and an espresso machine that hissed like an asthmatic.

 

Above the counter, a sun-faded poster drooped: Waisted Minds. A waist is a terrible thing to mind. Beneath it, graffiti scrawled by some anonymous wit demanded: Why are Texans so Austintatious?

He smiled grimly at the joke. It was just the sort of thing she would have laughed at.

He slid into a booth. Around him, voices hummed with the same desperate cadence. A sharp-suited man at the counter asked, too loudly, “If I’m so successful, why am I so lonely?” A pair of students argued over credit cards, one insisting, “I’m gonna max out my Monkey card,” as if that were rebellion. At another table a trio quoted advertising gurus like preachers citing scripture: The greatest sin in advertising is to be boring. “And the second greatest sin,” one added, “is not agreeing with Ogilvie.”

 

He pulled out his notebook. The pages were cluttered with fragments: The Four Atomic Sons of Madame Fauvre. Freestyle Frost Flicker--for cleaning ice off windows. A single word: Opinionitis.

 

He paused to reflect on that one. Yes, that was the sickness of the age. The inability to hear without judging. He remembered the P.I.N. Formula from de Bono—Positive, Interesting, Negative. But no one waited for the interesting anymore. Everyone lunged straight for the negative. To be effective, he thought, one must tame the value judgments, suspend the reflex to condemn. A mature mind listens first.

 

But who was listening?

 

He closed the notebook and left. Outside, the streetlamps flickered, frost spreading across their glass like silver lace. He whispered the only benediction he trusted: How to get blessed—be a blessing.

 

A voice startled him. “Talking to yourself, or to the universe?”

 

A young woman leaned against the lamppost, smoking. Her coat was too thin for the cold, her hair cut short in uneven lengths, as if she’d done it herself. She smiled wryly.

 

“Maybe both,” he said.

 

“Lucky universe,” she replied. “Most people don’t bother.”

 

They fell into step as he walked. She didn’t ask where he was going, and he didn’t offer. After a few blocks she said, “You look like a man who keeps notebooks. Am I right?”

 

He hesitated, then showed her the one in his pocket. She flipped it open, skimming the fragments. “‘A man who needs nothing can afford to risk everything.’ I like that.” She tapped the page. “But do you believe it?”

 

“Some days,” he said. “Other days I need everything and can risk nothing.”

 

She laughed—not unkindly. “That sounds about right. I once wrote: Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Then I realized I was quoting someone else, not myself. Isn’t that strange? How other people’s words get stuck in your blood?” 

Her candor knocked the air from his lungs. He thought of her, the one he’d lost—a woman bound by rules like chains. He said nothing.

 

The girl must have noticed. “Sorry. I say things too bluntly. It’s a flaw.”

 

“No,” he murmured. “It’s… familiar.”

 

They walked in silence until they reached the river. The water was black, its surface rimmed with ice.

 

“You know,” she said, tossing her cigarette into the current, “the footprints we leave—half the time they’re not even ours. They’re for whoever comes next.”

 

He looked at her sharply. The echo of Buzz Aldrin’s words startled him, as if the universe had been listening after all.

 

“What’s your name?” he asked.

 

She grinned. “Depends on the day. Tonight it’s Clara. Tomorrow it might be something else.”

 

“Clara,” he repeated, testing it. “Do you ever feel like you’re living inside a song? One you can’t quite hear but that keeps pulling you forward?”

 

She tilted her head. “All the time.”

 

He smiled for the first time in weeks. The Song of the Matrix was no longer a solitary hum. Someone else could hear it too.

And for the first time in months, he wasn’t just listening. He was accompanied.

 

# # # #

 

"The Song of the Matrix" is a collaborative work of fiction. The process I used to create this story was as follows. I was sifting through old folders on my Mac and came across a document where I had copied a batch of fragments and ideas from a writer's journal, circa the mid-90s. After feeding several of my short stories into ChatGPT and instructing it to "learn my style," I then fed a page from that Word doc into ChatGPT and instructed it to write a story using all these disparate elements. That was version one. I then re-fed an edited version of that into the AI. At the end of my third version, ChatGPT asked me if I'd like to add a second character to the story. I said yes, which resulted in version four. After tweaking and fine-tuning, I ended up with this which you read here. What do you think?

Imperfect Motives, Faithful Actions

Devotionals, as a category of Christian literature, are religious writings designed for personal spiritual growth and edification. These works—often in the form of daily readings, short meditations, or entries—typically include a Bible verse, a brief reflection, practical application, and sometimes a prayer to help believers deepen their relationship with God and apply faith to daily life.

One of the earliest books in this genre, published in 1486, was The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. When I read it some forty years ago, I was struck by a statement that stuck with me since that time. Kempis wrote, “It is better to do the right thing for the wrong reasons than to do the wrong thing.” 

There was something strange about this statement to me. As a result I spent a lot of time pondering whether this was true or not.

What I was stumbling over, as a young Christian, was the notion that if we were to be like Christ our motives should be pure like his. How could it be right to do anything for the wrong reasons? Isn't this hypocrisy of sorts?

As I reflected on this, it became apparent (to me) that the statement was quite brilliant. Human motives are rarely pure. Pride, fear, self-interest, and the desire for approval often mingle with genuine goodness. If moral action required perfect intention, very little good would ever be done. I'll say that again. If moral action required perfect intention, very little good would ever be done.

Kempis suggests that obedience to what is right has a formative power of its own. Right action, even when imperfectly motivated, can train the will, discipline desire, and slowly purify intention. In contrast, doing what is wrong—even with sincere feeling or passion—reinforces disorder and bends the soul away from truth.

This is not a dismissal of intention, but a refusal to let flawed motives paralyze moral responsibility. The good must still be done. Over time, action shapes the heart as much as the heart shapes action.  

This statement has another liberating feature. Overmuch introspection is a serious trap. We're always looking at ourselves instead of the needs of others. It's a variation of navel-gazing. This is not to deny the importance or value of reflecting on our actions to see what they reveal about what's inside us. Rather, the key is balance: healthy self-examination, guided by Scripture, leads us to repentance and greater reliance on Christ, while excessive or morbid introspection turns us inward in a self-absorbed way that breeds discouragement, despair, and neglect of loving others. Ultimately, true spiritual growth comes not from endless self-focus but from fixing our eyes on Jesus and turning outward in service, as the gospel frees us from the prison of over-analyzing ourselves.

Kempis reminds us that virtue is learned by practice. The path toward integrity often begins not with pure motives, but with choosing the good anyway. 

Applications are many. Here are some starter examples: Showing kindness despite mixed or reluctant feelings. Doing one’s duty when enthusiasm is absent. Practicing generosity before generosity feels natural. 

Doing what's right is a choice, even when we don't feel like it.