*This is Part 2 of the previous post "Riff God"...
Here’s how it works.
Like riffs in rock n’ roll, God’s riffs are
little bits that point to the bigger song. And what they are ultimately
pointing to are God’s kingdom and God himself. Like rock’s riffs, these riffs
might be interesting by themselves, but they are most interesting and significant
to the extent that they point to the divine songs. So, for example, something
like justice is important all by itself. But it takes on a more profound and
eternal significance when it reveals something about God, that he is just. And
then, when we pick up on the image riff—that humans are made to bear God’s
image—then that justice riff becomes personal as we begin playing it ourselves.
Our lives resonate with God’s life as we play his riffs. We become part of his
songs. Yes! That’s where the fist-pumping starts!
We are riff people, made to be consumed by God-riffs
and to be swept up into kingdom songs.
and to be swept up into kingdom songs.
So, riffs like justice and beauty and care and
peace—all nice tunes by themselves—become eternal ROCK! when we hear them in
God and start playing them with our lives. I’ve had strange dreams every so
often while drifting off with music playing. The music is instrumental
usually—John Coltrane or something—and I’ll dream that I’m talking to someone,
but what’s coming out of my mouth is what’s coming out of Trane’s sax. So I’m
talking but it’s this glorious, tumbling saxophone music that is coming out.
It’s your typical weird sort of dream, but it’s what I’m getting at here. God
is a riff God. And we—made in his image—are riff people, made to be consumed by
God-riffs and to be swept up into kingdom songs.
And this is why riffs get so discordant when
they are pulled out of the divine songs. They seem okay at first. But then
justice becomes street-justice, eye-for-an-eye vengeance. Beauty becomes
self-indulgent obsession and superficial lust. Care of creation becomes pagan
nature-worship and care of others becomes dehumanizing institutionalization.
And even peace becomes a schmaltzy live-and-let-live homogenization that is
apathetic toward truth and the deeper issues that divide.
But resounding with the Creator, the Redeemer, the
sanctifying Sustainer, these riffs become the very music of God’s kingdom come
on earth as it is in heaven (I think I heard that one somewhere). The same way
you know “Money for Nothing” by Mark Knopfler’s buzz-saw guitar riff, so the
world begins to know God by listening to the lives of people who have begun to
play his songs.
And like a kid sitting in his bedroom with the guitar he got
for Christmas, banging out elementary riffs like “Iron Man” and “Smoke On the
Water,” we learn gradually—maybe treating our family and friends justly, making
peace with everyday adversaries. The kid moves on to “Wanted Dead or Alive” and
“Crazy Train”—we learn the beauty of worship and to care for our elders. And so
it goes as the maturing young riffer hits “Purple Haze” and “Walk This Way” and
chord-based riffs that make his hands hurt like stuff by the Police and U2. We
maturing Christians learn to put others before ourselves and to affirm the
value of the lowly and to recognize the beauty of things that are only made
beautiful in God’s grace. Our lives become God-music. We learn the love riff,
and it hurts more than our hands. And no one knows this better than the riff
God.
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