Picking and Choosing
1/3/14
Reading a book and skipping to the exciting part is not
reading but an example of picking and choosing what one wants to read. I also have a hard time in believing these
types of people that read in this manner and then provide their own views according
to the portions that they have read. I
believe that one must read the entire book in order to understand the entire
content of what the author is trying to say to the reader. Picking and choosing is a dangerous field of
belief and it cannot serve any purpose except for your own. Many people are famous for this concept when
it comes to the Bible as well, even ministers must be included in this category
as well and all God asks of us is to read His Word in truth and He will provide
the understanding.
As many of you know my parents are ministers and have
been associated in some type of ministerial profession for over 50 years. This is a huge accomplishment and I am so honored
to have such a legacy within my bloodline.
There is not a day that goes by that I have to hang my head in shame
because of what my parents have proclaimed or achieved. I thank God every day that I came into their
lives 46 years ago and I pray that we have many more years together on this
earth.
Many progressions have been made in the Christian world
during my lifetime and when I stop and look back at these things I am utterly
amazed at how far the “Christian” scene has advanced. I am only going to pick one area of this
progression and it is a subject that I have talked about before but I am going
to add a few extra lines to the equation in order to set the stage for what God
is saying to us. The subject area is
music and music is a topic that I hold very close to my heart and it means the
world to me and I thank God hat I am able to understand how the composers and
artists are conveying their messages to the ones that are listening to their
works.
Some of you might not be aware that the Contemporary
Christian Music scene that we enjoy today has not always been around. In fact, it is still relatively new in its
origins even though modern technology has brought it along rapidly over the
past few decades. I have to be honest
and say that I do not listen too much of the Contemporary Christian music even
though I thoroughly enjoy hearing its messages that it provides t o a dying
world. Many of these songs touch my
heart and enhance my faith every time I turn in to the stations. I am also blessed to have a choice of
Christian radio stations to choose from for I know that one day these options
may be not available.
The Christian music industry really did not get off to a
popular start and it took a while for it to make it across the United States. I also have the honor in stating that my
father was part of the initial breakthrough in Contemporary Christian music when
we lived in California. Not only did our
church have its own touring music group we as a church invited many of the up
and coming Christian artists to our church as a section rally; all of these
occurred on a recurring schedule and it was fabulous. While this was a great opportunity for me to
witness a growing and positive trend in my life, this style of music was not
the original type of music that my parents introduced me to. My mother was very instrumental in introducing
me to classical music and she taught me to listen to it in a very special way
that made the music come to life and it is this aspect that I will explain and
make the connection about reading the Bible in its entirety and not just
picking pieces of this Word to believe.
My mother being in a band and playing a couple of
instruments during her lifetime; then include my father who played in a
marching band and loved every minute of it I really had no choice but to love
music and to try and understand its content as they did. They never forced me to play an instrument
and they tried their best to keep me interested in music all the while my
interests began to flame towards the female aspect of humanity. Mom did however peak my curiosity by a
question that I posed to her, in other words I initiated my own state of
beliefs about classical music, not her.
I walked into a room one day and she was sitting down listening to a
piece of music on the old record player.
My question to her went something like this: what are you exactly listening to? So she
proceeded to tell me.
First she told me to sit down and to get comfortable
because it is going to take time for her to explain the answer to me. She then got up and while she was walking
towards the console she told me a little bit about the piece of music that I
was about to hear. Now, I knew what a symphony
was and I also knew that there were many different types of instruments within
a symphony and when they all played their respective notes a beautiful sound
would protrude from the instruments into my ears. She started the piece again from the
beginning and told me to fix my ears on the trumpets and what their notes were
during the piece. Now, I do not know
about you but it came natural for me to hear trumpets because that is the
instrument that I played in school.
After the piece ended I thought that my day of my music
lessons was over but little did I know that they had just started. Mom asked me about the tempo of the trumpets
and I recited a little bit about their beats, no biggie right? Then she got up from the chair and went back
to the console and picked up the needle and began the piece of music over again
and then she said this time I want you to listen to the clarinets. This was a bit trickier for me because I was
now focused upon an instrument that I had not really listened to before. Es, I appreciated the clarinet but really
never thought about its specific existence within an orchestra before. The same questions were asked by mom to me
but this time my answers were not as thorough as the trumpet answers. Mom was not trying to provoke me into
becoming upset or to take prejudice against any other instrument within the
orchestra all she wanted me to do is to understand that there are more sounds
that make up a beautiful symphony than one or two sets of notes being played.
This cycle continued until she had me listen to each set
of instruments within the orchestra and I learned a great deal about music that
day and it is a lesson that I still use to this day when I am listening to any
type of classical music setting. What
mom taught me is that most of the time when our ears are listening to music we
usually focus on one aspect of that piece and basically tune out all of the
other items that we deem unimportant.
But these unimportant items also serve as a part of the complete and
overall symphony and must be used in order for the piece of music to sound as
the composer intended. A masterful piece
of music can be played without the entire complement of instruments being
present but when this occurs the full body of the work cannot be displayed and
projected because certain pieces are missing.
I continued to listen to classical music in this manner
and I enjoyed the process so much that I began to do the same procedure to the
music that we played and sang in church.
Quite a process that was and many of my friends never knew what I was doing
at the time. Church music was a tad
easier to complete in this way since there usually were just a limited amount
of instruments on the platform, but it was still a beautiful analysis of the
music and words that were being portrayed.
My classical music studies were fabulous and I soon began to recognize
certain pieces of music as soon as they would come on the radio or if mom had
one playing on the console when I came into the room. I found that my knowledge of classical music
was increasing on a constant basis and even initiated some musical commentary
with my mother about certain portions of music.
Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Tchaikovsky soon became
everyday words to me and these men began to influence my musical thinking on a
larger scale. I had the opportunity to
go listen to a matinee recital with my 4th grade band class while I
was in California. I cannot remember
which composer the musician played but I remember sitting there listening to
the concert in total amazement and wondering if I would ever be able to
understand music in a similar fashion as he did. My complete learning would take decades to
continue and I have to admit that I am still learning today.
One day mom asked me a question and this question
entailed of a composer by the name of Chopin.
I had no clue who this person was or what he played or if he was even in
the classical music industry. Mom then
asked me if I was familiar with a composer by the name of Shostakovich and I must
have given her the most craziest look because I could not even pronounce that
name much less recognize his works. Mom’s
point to me was that while I knew some of the bigger names in classical music
that there were still many other names in that genre that I had no clue about,
which meant that I did not know squat about the overall classical music
scene. Mom did not ask me these
questions to knock me down or to discourage me in any ways but she did want me
to understand that even though I might know some of the popular composers there
were far more out there that I still needed to learn.
The example that I just wrote to you occurred when I was
in Junior high school with a quick flashback to elementary school thrown in
there as well. I am 46 years old now and
I have to admit that I am still learning about composers and their music, even
today I have listened to works of music from composers that I had no idea
existed. Some of you might have heard of
a composer by the name of Lyatoshynsky, but I had never heard of him before and
up until today I had never heard any of his compositions. Has anyone heard of composers by the names of
Sgambati, Lachner, Busoni or Czerny? These
are some of the composers that I have recently learned about, all because I dug
into the classical music scene a little deeper than I normally would; that
normally would conditions being Bach, Beethoven and Mozart.
It is this type of listening and understanding that I am
trying to convey to the readers about the Bible as well. And here is how both subject come
together. A musical composition no
matter what type of music it is has a specific amount of notes that are put
into place so that the work can be finished.
This work may be a 5 minute contemporary rock song that is written for
only four instruments or it may be a 45 minute symphonic work that is written
for a full complement symphony, it does not matter but one must know that each
instrument and every note must be recognized and understood in order for that
piece of music to be played accurately and in the manner in which it was
written. The Bible is the same way my
friends.
As I stated above my father and mother have been in the
ministry for over 50 years; that is a very long time. Dad on a continual basis tells me that God
shows him new things on a constant basis.
Now, if a man has been in the ministry for over 50 years and God is
still showing him things, this means that my dad, who is totally dedicated to the
Word of God, has not fully learned everything that God’s Word is saying to
humanity. Dad admits this, so why cannot
the average and everyday Christian admit this as well? Why not every other pastor or minister admit
this? Or every other denomination or any
denomination for that matter?
God’s Word is the complete Word of God and His Word comes
from an infinite being that our finite minds cannot even come close to
understanding, yet He places His words into our lives through a series of
stories that are based upon human activity.
Now, why would we want to pick and choose from just bits and pieces of
our own history? That is easy to answer
and it really does not take too much thinking power to figure it out
either. It is because it takes all power
and authority away from us when our truthful past is proclaimed to us
today. The Bible is looked upon as a
judgmental book taken totally out of context in order to suffice our own whims
and qualms about our personal beliefs.
When a person or group takes the Bible and places it into this type of
setting, you are only listening to Bach, Beethoven and Mozart.
A quick example of this would be Paul and the effect that
he had upon the New Testament church.
Paul wrote a good portion of the New Testament itself and he is a very
popular figure when mentioned in biblical terms and settings. So one can safely regard Paul as being a Bach
or Mozart of the Bible, right? Ok, so we
can understand this analogy about the so called big names in the Bible but does
anyone know who Hadad was? He was
mentioned in the Bible and played an important part in a popular Old Testament
person’s life. What about Ashdod,
recognize him? Does anyone know what was
going on during the times of these last two names that I asked about? What about the importance of their lives and
what happened to them and their families or communities? These examples are the composers named
Czerny, Busoni, Cleve, Davydov, Fesca, Gablenz and countless others who even
though they might not be extremely popular still produced a valid claim to
their existence in the classical music realm.
So doe these almost unknown people in the Bible, they too have a claim
to their existence in the Bible and for some very important reason God decided
to mention them in His complete Word. Now,
don’t you think that there is a reason for this?
It is our responsibility to end the denominational
garbage that binds us to a limited biblical source and begin to seek the
personal relationship with God that He desires.
I am not saying to drop your denominations or your practices, but what I
am saying is that we need to forget the lines that our denominations bring to
our lives and to open up our hearts and to read, read, read and reread God’s
Word over and over again. God has everything
mapped out for our lives in His Word and I can guarantee you that He has not
left anything out. He created a very
smart individual and He gave us the ability to understand what He is trying to
get across to us. Our problem is that
our enemy wants us to pick and choose what we want to read and live by that
simple and little bit of information, and to be honest with the way the Church has
acted over the centuries we have allowed our enemy to complete this task almost
without any hindrance what-so-ever.
So, have the true grit to study God’s Word in the manner
in which my mother presented music to my life.
Take the time to understand each portion of the Bible as it was you
living each story. Use your heart to secure
the complete meaning that God wants your life to understand. Each instrument of the orchestra has a
purpose and a reason for its presence within that piece of music. Each one of us has a purpose in life as well
and we can find it if we read what God has to say about us. The Bible is about humans and the lives that
they lead, the conditions of their societies and their churches. God understands our lives because He is the
one who formed us from nothing. We need
to read His Word with a pure and honest heart not trying to justify our current
status by an isolated passage that is popular, for if we live by this standard
then we will be one of those people when our life is over will be saying…..Lord,
didn’t we cast out demons in your name???
DLB
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