Mixtape Christianity
I was late to the music-game. I always loved to sing (alone) and fiddle around pretending I could play the piano (poorly). I was a sucker for the pop radio hits because I thought they made me cool. It wasn’t until my freshman year of college, riding in a car with two musician friends, that I was introduced to the idea of listening to an album all the way through.
Most of you are probably thinking, “How did she NOT know that’s what you’re supposed to do?”
I ask myself that often.
I guess I was in just the right age range to miss records, cassettes, and CDs. Sure, I knew what they were, but I got my first iPod in 6th grade. Digital music was all I really knew. I rationed my sacred iTunes gift cards to purchase only the best of the best of the top charts - or, really, the most popular songs at school - so I could memorize the lyrics to scream-sing with my friends while standing in an awkward circle in the gym at a middle school dance.
And when I didn’t like a song anymore, or wanted to listen to something else instead, all it took was an easy click to skip over it.
Thank goodness for those college friends, though. They changed the music world for me. And not to be dramatic, but they kind of changed my life.
I felt like I had discovered a secret treasure. Entire albums work together through the individual songs, arranged in specific ways, to tell a story. My eyes were opened to a whole new beautiful side of music.
Isn’t it the same with God’s word? One verse, on chapter, might be great on its own. But something wonderful happens when you read the entire passage or book, noting the context and ideas the writer is communicating as a whole.
I fear we, as a culture, are turning into middle-school-music-me in relation to Scripture — “mixtape” Christians if you will. We pick the “best” or most popular verses, and plaster them everywhere. We skip over the ones we don’t like; the ones that make us uncomfortable or that we don’t understand.
But God’s Word isn’t a salad bar or pizza buffet. We don’t get to stroll along and only collect what looks appealing, we can’t only read and study our favorite slice.
I get it. The Bible is a big book. Some of it seems kind of weird. Like, why do I need to know how many people were in each tribe of Israel? Or, why should I care about the ceremonial law outlined in Leviticus?
Well, the Bible teaches that all Scripture is God-breathed. That means every book, every page, every word has been carefully and intentionally written to fulfill God’s purpose for the text. All Scripture is also “profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and for training in righteousness” — and here’s the kicker — the purpose of Scripture is “that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
The lessons to learn from God’s word are not usually found in a one-liner pulled out of context, but in the overarching theme of a passage or story. A verse or phrase is great to recognize and memorize, but we should strive to know and understand the passage it’s from and the even broader, “Big Story” of Scripture it fits into.
Just like a single catches our ear before an album releases, or a clip on TikTok leads us to discovering a new artist, a verse or phrase from Scripture can spark interest in our minds and hearts - my prayer is that we would use that as a launching point for diving deeper into God’s Word.
May we grow from being mixtape Christians to full-length album Christians. May we not just build playlists of popular verses, but a library full of the Word of God. May we savor every single word, marvel at the purpose of each passage, and be in awe of the intricacies of the bigger story it is telling.
