According to conventional wisdom, Johnny damned himself by accepting the bet in the first place. The devil “loses”, but that just cements Johnny’s sin of pride.
The devil might not have gotten Johnny’s soul the day of the contest, but make no mistake, he does eventually get the soul.
Nah. Conventional wisdom says he can either
- the the priest all about it and do some chants
- find himself a baptizer and spend the rest of his time Jesusing real hard.
Johnny’s options will depend on his local wise man, but I suspect either way he’ll also be strongly encouraged to buy some merch.
Yes and no. While the rules are all made up, and different people can just make up more rules, the standard rules say that any deal with the devil, even this bet, is a sin, an unforgivable sin. Adding in the sin of pride, which means Johnny is unlikely to ever repent, and the devil got a soul.
Also, there’s a sequel song with a bunch of big names on the project, Johnny went down due to the sin of pride.
Christianity’s whole thing is that no sin is unforgivable (except deliberate rejection of the Holy Spirit’s work/testimony about Jesus (Mark 3:20-28))
Well if you’re religious. There’s a whole class of individuals in the South that get off on showing the religious just how little they care for the tenets of Christianity. In addition to playing a mean fiddle, Johnny probably swears like a sailor and has extramarital sex whenever he can.
The song came out in 1979. The Southern Rebel was a big concept in the culture.
