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My maternal grandfather was apparently a pretty good fiddle player. While I pastored in Ottawa, Kansas, I was privileged to have many trained and acclaimed violinists. As I understand it, not being an avid musician, my grandfather and the violinists used the same instrument! They just were trained to use differing techniques to play different types of music.
All the churches I served as pastor had fantastic pianists and organists. I was blessed to pastor churches with fine music programs. But the pianists I served with didn’t play the piano like the keyboardists of a modern worship team. And the organists didn’t play the organ the same way an organist in the Black Church tradition plays.
Or have you considered that the classical guitar, the electric guitar, and the banjo are all basically the same instrument but make entirely different sounds? The difference, it seems, is how the sounds of the strings are amplified and resonated. The classical guitar uses the instrument's body to resonate the sound, the electric guitar uses electrical amplification, and the banjo basically uses a drum head!
Interesting, but what has this got to do with theology…
Well, you see, musicians can play the same instrument and make entirely different types of music depending on how they have been trained to play, their techniques, and their chosen music. Instruments that are basically the same sound are different depending on how the sound is amplified and how the sound waves are manipulated and processed. But no matter how it’s played or what it is played upon, all music basically has the same purpose: to cause us to feel something true, deep, and pure about life, ourselves, or the world.
So, too, our theology… our “God Talk,” … our understanding of Scripture and how it teaches us about who God is and about how God is calling us to live out our lives. As we read Scripture, our understanding of a particular verse or story will be shaped by how we have been trained to read our Bible, about how our soul has been shaped to allow the words to resonate in our spirit by the Holy Spirit, about how our own life has been shaped and molded to receive the teachings of this particular Word in our life. We might read the same words, and we might even have the same core intentions as we read, but God has shaped us to receive the words differently, and the different “truth” we find will serve the same purpose in both our lives… to draw us closer to the one who loves us.
Sometimes, I feel like today's culture wants to create a series of nesting dolls with the same shapes and similar looks, just different sizes. But God, the great musician, wants to create a symphony utilizing all types of instruments, musical genres, and songs.
Just as we appreciate the difference between a good fiddle player and a violinist, just as we enjoy the rift of an electric guitar and the plucking of a banjo, perhaps we can learn to appreciate the thoughts of the many followers of Christ Jesus who seek to proclaim in their own voice and life that God loves us, that Jesus is Lord, and that He was sent to redeem us for all eternity.
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