Practice or Pyre

I’m a better musician than many, not professional by any means, but certainly proficient. As a guitarist, I can lead camp fire songs with the best of them. As a bassist, I usually only need to know the key in which the song is played. Yet, in both cases, I’m really just a competent fake.

Some years ago I attended a concert with a musician who is far and away my superior. Yet, when faced with the master solo guitarist on the stage, he turned to me and said with a smile, “Some guys make you want to go home and practice, and some guys make you want to just burn your equipment.” The musician on the stage fit the latter category.

Again, I’m a good musician, better at least than the youth pastor at my church or the members of some garage bands I’ve encountered. But in this I’m comparing myself to amateurs and other competent fakes. I could probably play a decent rhythm track under most professionals, or at least the staff of the local music store.

But pair me with a true master, whose guitar strings whisper sweet music at his very presence, and I’m playing $300 worth of firewood. I simply don’t measure up, and pretending that I do would only make me look more foolish.

I think the same can be said for people in general. As an evangelical Christian I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard people brush me off with the words, “I’m a good person.” But what if that “goodness” is determined by a fallen standard? Most who say that following the Ten Commandments will get you to Heaven can’t even name them—not by half. No matter how good we are, God is still better, and compared to His mellifluous tones, the best of us sounds like a violin student in his first lesson. After that jam section, the prospect of being thrown into Hell won’t sound so unjust.

But God as a trick up His benevolent sleeve.

The soundtrack to the movie Black Snake Moan is played by a group of highly professional, highly competent blues musicians. The actor, Samuel L. Jackson, is not one of them, but he did spend some rather humbling time with them learning to play. In the film we see the actor playing the song to the best of his meager ability. Again, he was taught by the pros, and he knows the part. But in truth he’s just playing along with soundtrack, and it’s the notes of the master musician we’re actually hearing.

This is what the cross was about; Jesus taking our pour excuse for righteousness and replacing it with His own.

This is what the Christian Faith is about; crap musicians learning to play at the feet of the Master.

For those of use who know Him, He makes us want to practice.

And of course, there’s also the desire to keep others from needlessly burning their equipment.