Guitar amp
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I have a friend named Lance. He also is a United Methodist pastor. He is a polymath.
Of the many gifts, graces and skills this guy has, he has the ability to play the guitar. He says he is not very good, but I cannot play the guitar and so to me it sounds like he can "shred" (I think that is the correct term). Anyway I was asking him a slew of questions about his new guitar when he began to talk about amplifiers, AKA “amps.”
Jason Valendy Ident 2022
I assumed that an amp receives the electrical signals from the guitar and then just makes those signals stronger so those signals can be fed to a speaker which allows the sound to be heard. This is not exactly what happens. Apparently (and I confirmed this with another friend who is a professional musician named Jackson) the amp is like a second part of the guitar instrument. The amp is a filter to the sound from the guitar. If I plug the same guitar into different amps I will get a different sound. The sound is still coming from the same source (the guitar) but the sound is being altered by the different ways the different amps are created. When I heard this, I could only think of one thing,,,
The Bible.
The Bible is like the guitar. God is like the musician who uses the instrument called the Bible to communicate with humans. Each human is like a different amp. Each human receives the words and signals from the Bible. Because each human is different and is made just a little bit different from other human beings, the way that human understands and talks about the Bible is a modified by their experiences and their makeup.
The amp can try really hard to stay as true to the guitar, but it just is not possible to do a one-to-one replication of the sound. The amp distorts the sound. But that does not mean the sound is bad or not reflective of the intent of the musician. In fact many musicians make the choice to play in a way knowing that sound will be distorted. Distortion of the sound is desirable because the point of the musician playing the music is to harmonize with others.
God gives us the Bible and when we read the Bible we distort it, and God knows it. God’s goal is not a one-to-one replication. God’s goal is to make music so that the Lord of the Dance can lead us all. The Bible, like an electric guitar, cannot be heard on its own. It needs amps and speakers. But the amp cannot amplify nothing; it has to be connected to a source. Humans cannot amplify much of anything; we need a source in order to hear the music.
If you have read anything on this blog for any amount of time, you may see this metaphor and its connection to The United Methodist Church. Anyone who reads the Bible without an amp is not making any music. And anyone who is making music is making interpretive decisions on how that music sounds. The assumption that some people read the Bible without any interpretation are people who actually are not reading the Bible. They are playing a guitar in a way it was not intended to be played.
No wonder so many people are turning from Christianity. We are using the Bible in a way it was not intended by God to be used. And so, let us read the Bible well. Let us play the music so that it becomes a song for the Lord of the Dance to lead us in.