As I was coming home from teaching guitar lessons the other night, I was thinking about one of my new students who is probably only a week away from his first big milestone as a guitar player:
Being able to play Green Day’s “Time of Your Life.”
Apparently that generation of music has come and gone since most of the younger students have never even heard the song anymore. Maybe not the worst thing in the world, but back to my point.
After having gone over that song religiously with several different students to help them put chords together and play a whole song, I’ve become very thankful that my end goal as their teacher is not to make every student sound like Green Day. You have not “arrived” as a guitar player when you’re able to play “Time of Your Life,”and Green Day’s style is certainly not superior to all other musical styles.
Quite frankly, music would be boring if all guitarists sounded the same, and we’d miss out on the varying styles of other exceptional guitarists like Jimi Hendrix, Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave’s Tom Morello, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Yngwie Malmsteen, and so on.
Yet as Christians, it seems like there’s some kind of unspoken mold that we’re all supposed to fit. It’s not necessarily talked about all that often, but there’s immense pressure to fit that mold.
Honestly, I think it’s boring, and it’s not Biblical.
“But isn’t everyone supposed to aim for being more like Jesus?”
Yes, by pursuing his righteousness, character, and what it means to love and be human. Not as pertains to his sense of humor, his “intro or extrovertedness,” his skills and giftings, or the color of his loincloth.
There are a lot of different ways to go with this. That as the Church, we’re supposed to embrace our different personalities, skills, and strengths…or that God has created each one of us to be unique, yet we all bear His image…or that even the disciples, the people that were around Jesus the most, had very different abilities, social tendencies, and ways of worshiping and serving God.
But the question I’ve been asking myself for the last two years is,
What does it look like for Chris Kopp to become more like Jesus Christ and to fulfill more of my God-given potential?
Not, what does it look like for me to become more like Francis Chan? And not, what does it look like for me to become more like _____________, the good-looking, loveable, leader at Church ABC?
But what does it look like for me to become more like Jesus, given my unique talents, personality, and other attributes?
Ever ask yourself that question? It seems like it should be fairly easy to answer, but man, do I struggle with coming up with an answer.
It’s kind of like a beautiful guitar that’s not working quite right. We have to dig and get in there to see how we’re wired, who we’ve been created to be, and how we operate. Until we go through the sometimes painful process of figuring some of those things out, we’re like a mess of wires and twisted strings.
But just like how that same guitar can absolutely sing when it’s understood how that guitar works and how it’s supposed to be used, I’m hoping the same might be true of me. That as I learn more about who God’s created me to be, how I interact with God, and how I interact with others, I can quit pretending I’m something or someone I’m not and rest in the fact that this is who God pre-destined me to be before the foundation of the earth was laid.
This is eternal life in the flesh – the process of becoming who we were created to be that begins when we entrust our lives to Christ, gets hammered out in as many days as God grants us, and is brought to completion in death. It’s an incredibly messy process. One whose path is by no means clear most of the time, and one which will never be finished here on earth, but a process that will one day be brought to completion.
“He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6
-CK
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