In thinking about why I am a bit uncomfortable with fundamentalist Christians, even though they share many of my theological convictions, an analogy occurred to me wherein the Christian faith is much like a symphonic piece, and the Fundamentalists, as well as a whole host of Evangelicals, are singing the basic melody, but are missing the whole symphony, a wonderfully complex orchestral piece that has a clear melody, but a melody that throughout the whole of the orchestration is repeated with a slight variation on a consistent theme, and where there are echoes of the melody, counter-melodies (which heighten the tension of the melody) and where there is vocal and instrumental harmony, all of which provides texture, depth, and breadth to the song that is Christianity. The main problem, however, is not that they are merely singing the melody, but that they too often think that the mere melody is the whole orchestration, and too often they are suspicious of those parts of the larger orchestration that go beyond the basic melody. In short, its like their souls have become attenuated by only listening to the pop version of the Christian faith.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2014 at 10:49 am and is filed under Music, Theology Notes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.