As any guitarist will tell you, playing the 'six string thing' is one of life's greatest pleasures. Guitars are so cool. If you can get past the bit where you spend months of your life in the company of blistered fingertips as you learn to play the machine, then there exists the potential for a handsome pay-off. You can join a band, do lots of posing, wear weird threads, grow your hair and attract members of the opposite sex like never before. The headstock of the guitar is a particularly useful as a place to put your cigarette when you can't be bothered to use an ashtray or you just want to look funky. Electric guitarists are introduced to a whole new language and undergo initiation into techno-gadget nerd heaven. "Yeah man, just ran the strat' through this wild wah-wah and flange pedal, tap-delayed, patched straight into the effects loop. Had the baby singing through the overdriven Marshall valve stack, EQ'd with plenty of mids. Sound just blew me away man…." (drivel, drivel).
The guitar does share the same problem as all string instruments however, in that you have to tune them with those twiddly metal bits called machine heads (…I don't know why they're called that either). Whilst it's fantastic as a solo instrument it is wonderful for playing chords too just like the piano. The difficulty with chords is that they only sound any good if all the strings are in tune with each other. Just one string a micro hertz off key can throw the whole grooving music thing into abstract jazz with all the tenderness of an upset grizzly bear. It matters not one crotchet that the other five strings are perfectly tensioned. Dis-chord is discord. It's a sure-fire way of dispersing your listeners quicker than you can say Segovia or Yogi.
Interestingly, the New Testament talks about this very subject. Well, it doesn't mention guitars as such, but where the musician talks of harmonies and intervals, the Bible mentions peace and holiness, and the untuned string becomes Scripture's 'bitter root'.
| "Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy. Without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many." (Hebrews 12:14-15) |
We've been studying Hebrews at the London study group that I belong to over the past year. This exhortation of the writer to the early Hebraic converts caused some discussion. We noted that the Church is split into many denominations because of different shades of understanding over certain doctrinal issues. And even inside fellowships believers have to tolerate differences which whilst mostly innocuous and of little import are sometimes fairly major. In short, the ideal Christian community of the New Testament does not really exist: we are all fallen sinners and we are incapable of perfection.
Just how do we obey this command of Scripture when we see doctrinal ignorance and error creep in around us? It is a dilemma that is hard to resolve. Active campaigning against error can so easily upset others and create enmity, whilst pursuing non-confrontational policies and ignoring error can lead to people 'missing the grace of God' as the passage puts it. Both courses of action have consequences that are like 'bitter roots'.
The conclusion of our discussion was this. The emphasis of the passage is on ensuring that all brothers and sisters do not backslide into apostasy but stand firm in Christ. Actively warning others over sloppy doctrine and helping them find the Biblical line takes priority over the 'preserve-the-unity-and-pretend -we're-everybody's-buddy' policy. The writer is giving only secondary emphasis when he says, 'make every effort to live at peace…' because he wants a peaceful environment in which to spread the gospel. The challenge for us is to love in the way God loves - by speaking the truth plainly even when the other person may be initially upset by the truth's sting. Reconciliation with God is more important than reconciliation with each other - although the second will surely follow if the first is put right.
Let's return to the wayward guitar string for a moment. There are two ways of resolving the tuning problem. The first option is to retune all the other five strings to be in tune with the deviant, but then the guitar would no longer be at concert pitch and useless for playing with other instruments. Alternatively you can bring the discordant chunk of metal into tune with the other strings. This is ultimately a better way of proceeding, involving less work and producing superior results.
What do you think? Is it better to brush differences of doctrine under the carpet or to bring them into the open?