Keep the BeatSample

DAY 3: TOO FREE

Shortly after graduating from college, I decided I wanted to learn to play the guitar.

Within a few weeks, I had figured out the basics and was able to play most of the chords needed for the worship songs I was trying to learn. What I struggled with were the strum patterns. I could never quite get a consistent pattern going and would sometimes even skip a few beats because I was strumming the wrong way and getting off beat. I remember the first time I got together with a friend and we tried to play together. He had the correct strum pattern for the songs, but I was way too free with my strumming and that became clear when we both played the same song at the same time. We were definitely not in unison. It wasn’t enough that I knew the right chords to play; I didn’t know the proper way to strum the guitar. As a result, I couldn’t join in with others. It was only me and my guitar, and that was a lonely place to be.

If we are going to claim the name of Christ, we must abandon our desire for freedom for the sake of unity and community. Too many Christians today are living too free, saying and doing whatever they will with little regard for God’s purpose and design.

This is why we need the Scriptures. It provides the metanarrative—the Big Story—that helps us to stay grounded in the faith. Paul wrote to Timothy,

"All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work."

Theologian N.T. Wright offers a helpful metaphor. He suggests that we can view the Scriptures like a five-act play, with the first four acts being Creation (I), Fall (II), Israel (III), and Jesus (IV). The early church of the New Testament would be the first scenes of Act V.

As players in the Grand Story, it should be our intent to learn the script’s origin and plot and then to improvise accordingly in moving the story toward its finale.

A few years ago, I took some of my colleagues to the SAK Comedy Lab in Orlando. SAK is a leader in improv comedy and this night did not disappoint. Like the popular TV show “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” SAK actors make up the whole show on the spot with some direction and topics provided by the live audience.

On this night, I had a special surprise planned. My buddy Justin coaches high school boys basketball and his team had won a state championship a few weeks prior. To celebrate, I signed up Justin for an Improv Special at SAK. Midway through the performance, they announced Justin as a special guest and invited him on to the stage. A few weeks before our visit, I had filled out a basic questionnaire about Justin and his coaching endeavors, and the actors reviewed that with him on stage. They asked a few additional questions, including some details about some of the players on his team. Then, they sent Justin back to his seat as they introduced the audience to “Coach Harden: The Musical.”

For the next ten minutes, we watched a group of actors who knew very little about Justin (or evidently about basketball in general) perform a hilarious original story about Justin and his championship team. It was funny because it was believable. There was enough truth in it, even if exaggerated for comedic effect, that we couldn’t help but laugh and point and nod.

Without reading the detailed answers on the questionnaire that I completed and without spending time getting to know Justin a little bit, the actors could not have played it well. If they had just decided to do a musical about basketball as a general topic, it may have still been funny, but it would not have represented Justin, and the audience would have never heard about the great exploits of Coach Harden. While the actors took some liberties, if they had been too free, it would have failed.

You can’t play the part if you don’t read the script.

Jeremy Myers writes, “In this way, the Bible guides and informs us, not so that we mindlessly repeat what other characters in the story have said and done, but so that we allow the previous Acts in the story to inform and guide what we ourselves say and do in our part of the story.

Some of the things will be similar, but most will be different, and everything will build upon what has come before to carry the plot forward toward the appropriate conclusion.”

When Christians don’t read the script, one of two things happens:

1. They get stage fright. When they are asked to play their part—to embody their faith in the public eye—they freeze. When they are finally given an opportunity to deliver their lines, they stand silently, too afraid to speak. Their witness is lost in the moment.
2. They monologue. They don’t know what to say so they just babble on endlessly trying to fill the air while they search for the right words, but never find them. TV personalities on air, politicians at debates, and experts-who-aren’t-really-experts giving interviews, will often resort to monologuing because they never bothered to learn their lines. In the same way, we can fall “out of character” if we aren’t intentional about staying true to the script.

The Playwright has cast us each into a role. Let us not be too free that we would fail to find our voice and play our part in the greatest story ever told.

REFLECTION

As players in the Grand Story, it should be our intent to learn the script’s origin and plot and then to improvise accordingly in moving the story toward its finale. How might this view of the Scriptures change the way you read and respond to God’s word?