Another aspect of his youth that influenced both his music and his image in later life, is his connections with his religion and spirituality. He was raised as a Christian, but his issues with drug addictions and his outlaw image shadowed and separated his connection to God. All of this reinforced the impossibility of categorising Cash. He did embrace his outlaw image, but contradicted it still, to be the self-confessed saint and sinner his name is mostly associated with. Yet, despite his downfalls, and his sins he remained to keep a complicated relationship with his faith and spirituality.
It was his faith and spirit that saved him during his suicide attempt during his early years, and allowed him to embody the paradox and contradiction he kept up through his life. His self-identificiation as a sinner plays dynamically with his religious evocations, and not only reinforces his contradictory, outlaw image but rather plays on it. His religious and spiritual upbringing made him the man that he is today, and arguably without religion wouldn't have had the opportunity to even create the persona of Johnny Cash, as he wouldn't have been influenced from such an early age.
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