Tune my heart

Posted on Apr 19, 2017 in General |

Guitar tuners, along with toothpicks, are among the greatest of creations. For someone with less than perfect pitch, like myself, they are a Godsend! I even have a guitar-tuning app on my iPhone. Aren’t you grateful?

While tuning my instrument before heading to Dallas County Juvenile, a thought occurred to me: My tuner has a perfect middle spot, a “bull’s eye” of sorts. When you pluck a particular string, a wavering line pops up; sometimes to the left indicating flatness, sometimes to the right indicating sharpness. Even when you tweak the string towards the bull’s eye, it is a challenge to get a vibrating string to hold still! It’s next to impossible to be perfectly tuned! My wandering mind went to wondering, ‘Isn’t this just what it’s like to pursue the perfect balance of grace and truth?’ Even when we exert great care and effort, we are likely to be either slightly sharp, or slightly flat. Even when we correct we are prone to over-correct!

I am currently reading a book titled Beautiful Orthodoxy. In it, the author highlights the Christian community’s tendency to constantly be out-of- tune. Maybe you’ve noticed! He reminds us that among some Christians there is a fierce devotion to being “right,” a stringent desire to be theologically correct. This can be admirable to a point, don’t you think? Yet those of us with this particular bent often end up promoting an “ugly orthodoxy.” We are theologically correct, but attitudinally wrong – unloving, unkind, unapproachable, which is ultimately un-Jesus!

On the other side, there are those of us in the Christian community who advocate for a broad and gentle acceptance. This is a grace towards others that easily veers into the error of “beautiful heresy.” We begin to accept the unacceptable in the name of “love.” We distort God’s mercies to the point that we affirm things that the God we worship condemns. We substitute an imitation of grace for God’s grace.

Which is your tendency, sharp or flat? Ugly orthodoxy or beautiful heresy? The only way to get rightly tuned is under the guidance of God’s Word – both written and incarnate. The latter form, Jesus, was full of both “grace and truth” (You can look it up:

John 1:14 – 17

.). He displayed this regularly, perhaps nowhere more vividly than when He addressed the woman caught in the act of adultery:

John 8:11 (ESV) 
And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

Grace. Truth. Beautiful. Orthodoxy.