Several days ago I was in the car, listening to songs shuffled at random. Just as I pulled into the parking lot I heard the opening lines of “The Legend of John Henry’s Hammer,” recorded at one of Cash’s famous 1968 Folsom Prison shows. Transfixed, I sat and listened to the whole seven-minute song, which tells the story of a man who, after winning a heart-pounding spike-driving competition against a machine, lays down his hammer and dies. It is a great story that may be read as a warning to those who equate scientific and technological advance with human progress. What I’d like to ask is this: do stories point us, in even the smallest of ways, toward anything that might be described as the truth?
Paul Wallace
Paul Wallace is a freelance writer who is currently teaching physics at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Ga. He recently received his MDiv with a concentration in historical theology from Emory University. Formerly a department chair and professor of physics and astronomy at Berry College in Rome, GA, Paul lives in Atlanta with his wife and three children. He blogs at psnt.net.
