Have you noticed how crazy popular certain types of headphones have become? These days it's all about noise cancellation and whatnot. I say whatnot because I don't really know anything else about headphones. In fact, I was riding the bus back home from campus yesterday when I heard some fellers in front of me discussing their favorite brands of headphones and why they liked each type of headphones. I was amazed at how much they knew about these things and how much each type, brand, and style of headphones differed from another! It got me to thinking: why do people care so much about their headphones all of a sudden? It almost seems like people don't even care about the style of music they listen to or even the player they're using. As long as it all sounds good in their ears, they've got it made!
Sound familiar? All too often, we try to make our lives sound so good.
"How's your day been?"
"Good! It's beautiful outside!"
"How's that sandwich workin' out for ya?"
"It's salami! It's delicious of course!"
"How's [insert sorority, fraternity, or organization] going?"
"It's wonderful! I have so many friends their!"
"How's your walk with Christ going?"
"Couldn't be better! God is teaching me so much these days!"
Why aren't we more worried about the quality of the music (our lives) that people are listening to than how that music sounds to them? If you're listening to a loop track of a man having his leg hair plucked, it doesn't matter how good the sound quality is, that "music" is going to be painful to hear. Likewise, if you plug those headphones into someone's ear rather than an iPod, the headphones are useless and can even be counterproductive.
All in all, in my analogy, headphones are pointless. Us buying new headphones with the best sound technology out there does nothing but make our lives sound crispy clean and impress others.
Doesn't that sound appeasing though? Isn't that something we long for deep down inside? We want people to like us and think we have it all together.
But in Ephesians 6, Paul talks about obeying our masters because it's the same as obeying Christ. He says, "Not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart." In Galatians 1:10 he says, "For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ."
Isaiah 29:13 says, "This people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men." Jesus quoted this passage (Matt. 15) when He was shooting down the Pharisees. Apparently, they were calling out Jesus because His disciples weren't following stupid traditional rules and yet some of their other traditional rules pretty much allowed people to bypass God's commandment.
Basically, the Pharisees were trying to make themselves look good in front of whoever was around by showing how much of the "elders' tradition" they knew when in turn they were the hypocrites as Jesus called them. Notice that what they were saying sounded good to the people around them. People back then took the traditions of the church very seriously and were punished if they didn't. So those people would've been very impressed and pleased by the Pharisees calling Jesus' disciples out on this stuff.
However,
1.) Their music (lives) wasn't pure. Their hearts were against God and their lives were bent on disproving Jesus' claim of being the Messiah.
2.) Their iPods (sources) were not iPods at all. In fact, they were dead humans that obviously didn't acknowledge the Scriptures as the go-to for enforcing rules and regulations on the people. They made things up as they went and ignored what God's Law was.
What can we get from all this?
Well, first off, make sure you have an iPod. Make sure you have a reliable source that your music comes from or else you will have no music for people to hear.
Secondly, make sure you have quality music. How do we do this? Well, don't download any tracks that are, for example, called "Donkeys Mating." That is not going to be a pretty sound. If your life is playing trash like that, check yourself.
Lastly, don't connect headphones to your iPod, connect a loud speaker to it! An iPod dock! A P.A. system! Let the music you've downloaded from God's word resonate from you so that everyone can hear. It might not be the best quality and you might get some bad feedback (which applies to the metaphor and the real-life application by the way..), but you are obeying God.
Romans 10:14b,17 says, "And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?...So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ."
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