The Bible Has a Melody
When I was in the 8th grade, I played the baritone in our middle school band–it’s like a miniature tuba. When the time came for us to pick our solo pieces for evaluation, my band teacher helped me to select a piece that she thought would challenge me in a good way. It was called “Sound an Alarm.”
A fitting title.
Weeks went by. I would stare at the notes on the page, bewildered. The sounds that came out of my instrument as I practiced were a form of cruel and unusual punishment on my poor parents and sister.
The time for my evaluation was quickly approaching and I still had no idea how to play this piece. Sound an alarm.
Breakthrough finally came when I found an audio recording of what the piece is actually supposed to sound like. I carefully listened to the person playing their instrument while following along on my sheet music. It started making sense.
This would be a great point in the story for me to say that I ended up crushing the solo and received superior marks all the way. In full transparency, I don’t remember how the performance went. It’s one of those memory black holes–I’m sure you have some as well.
It’s interesting to me, however, that what I do remember from that experience a few decades ago was this: listening to the audio recording was the turning point for me to be able to start playing the song.
That audio recording synthesized the many complex notes on my sheet music into something I could work with–something accessible and approachable.
The art of synthesis is “the combining of often diverse conceptions into a coherent whole.” We need synthesis in nearly every area of our lives.
Recipes are forms of synthesis. People who know what they’re doing in the kitchen, who have taken the time to experiment with cook times, temperature, and ingredient ratios have condensed their knowledge into something bite-sized and readily applicable to the beginner cook.
Bite-sized.
The practice of synthesis is immensely helpful to our understanding of the Bible. In a previous post, I wrote about the value of teaching the big storyline of the Bible. What I’m talking about is synthesis–taking the 66 books of the Old and New Testament and organizing their central themes and message in a way that’s accessible and bite-sized.
Jesus does a type of Bible synthesis in Matthew 22:40 when he makes the claim that all of the Law and Prophets (aka all of the commands of the Old Testament) hang on these two commandments: love the Lord and love your neighbor as yourself.
To go back to my musical metaphor, the benefit of a synthesis of the whole story of the Bible is similar to the benefit I received when I heard the audio of “Sound an Alarm”. The entire Bible also has a central melody that it sings to us. It’s the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus left the guesswork out and told us this was so directly (see Luke 24:27 and John 5:39).
When you’ve heard the song played for you and your ears have been trained to recognize the melody, you’re better equipped to read and understand the individual notes on the page. In other words, the practice of biblical synthesis–taking in a broad overview of the entire story–helps you understand and internalize the purpose of the details in each story.
So then what does it look like practically to “listen to the melody” of the Bible? Are there any tools or strategies that I can employ to get a sense of the larger story?
The answer is YES!
Over the next few posts, I’m going to highlight a few tools and Bible study strategies that will help you to grow in your understanding of the story of the Bible. Here’s a preview of where I’m going:
Biblical covenants as a framework for understanding the entire Bible
Key biblical themes as a way to trace the gospel melody from Genesis to Revelation
The historical hinges of the biblical narrative
Helpful tools and resources for personal Bible study
These tools and resources have been life changing for me in my own personal Bible study. My hope and prayer is that they would help serve you too!
See you in the next blog post where we’ll be talking biblical covenants.
Now, consider listening to some good classical music today. I highly recommend this piece by Handel… it’s called “Sound an Alarm”.
