We recently had a gentleman tune our piano. When my husband called to make the appointment, the gruff voice on the other end of the line said brusquely that he was the best and the most affordable and that we needn’t bother calling anyone else. It wasn’t a boast, just a simple fact. Over the course of 45 years, this man has tuned more than 25,000 pianos—all by ear.

I don’t know what I expected from such a man. The occupation of piano technician seems to me such an antiquated one that maybe I expected someone more formal and reserved, someone who would probably chasten me for the condition of my piano and my lack of its upkeep while simultaneously playing Brahms with knobby, spider’s fingers. He would be an older man with a schoolmarm’s severity. Fredrik Backman’s Ove, but with a musical bent. I didn’t expect him to compose songs with these titles: “Trans Vaccinated Man,” “Creepy Joe & Kamal Toe,” and “I’m Not Trending,” among others. I didn’t expect the political and conspiratorial evangelization that would dominate the hour he spent in our home.

We live in an age of supreme skepticism. Everyone, no matter his political bent, acknowledges the problem of misinformation, the ease with which people can be swayed by the shifting winds of rhetoric, yet we never count ourselves among the deceived. It’s always the nebulous “they” who are (at best) ill-informed, or (at worst) actively contributing to whatever pet conspiracy theory is running rampant in the residence of our minds, terrorizing the neighborhood and happily defecating on the rug. Our piano tuner was merely the embodiment of the most extreme form of this disillusionment of delusion. I need not even expound on the specifics of all his positions for you to conjure this man in your mind. You’ve met him. If not in person, then certainly online. Maybe you’ve even noticed him in the shadowy recesses of your bathroom mirror.

During the course of the tuner’s sermon (for I know no other word to describe the passionate monologue he delivered), he frequently returned to the idea of truth. Truth, in his context, was whatever he had deemed consistent with his own perspective of reality. He had it and you didn’t. And, of course, you needed him to enlighten you. My husband and I tried to interject, tried to draw him into a conversation on the basis of the Bible, of the gospel, of capital-T Truth in all its grand objectivity, but he steamrolled any such attempt. We believed the Bible? Then why weren’t we flat earthers? Church? Pointing to his chest: “church is here!” This before he referred to his political ditties as hymns. He even went so far as to imply he was a savior in delivering his message to us–Moses atop the dung heap of social media.

At the heart of all this conjecture is an authority problem. This man is so afraid of being deceived, so distrustful of any and everyone, any and everything, that he believes his only recourse is to rely solely on himself. The irony is that to look to yourself as the arbiter of truth is to guarantee you will find none (Jeremiah 17:9). My ultimate fear is not that you, dear Christian, will fall down the rabbit hole of whatever conspiracy theory is trending at the moment (I pray you’re more cautious where you step). * Instead, my fear is that we in the church behave no differently.

In the American church, we take this same methodology into our worship of God. We are deeply distrustful of our pastors, the shepherds God has placed over us for our care and well-being. We are skeptical of the teaching and even of the very Bible itself. We often place ourselves in the seat of judgment over the Word of God, as if we have the authority to determine truth. And no, it’s not just progressive “Christians” who do this. For every fanciful twisting of a passage to fit a woke agenda, there’s the conservative counterpart: do we really know the right interpretation of that passage? It’s nothing more than relativism masquerading as reason. Often, it’s a way to justify a position that suits you and your desires. The truth is that we are unwilling to submit ourselves to Scripture because we’re afraid to be led, we’re afraid of what might be required of us, we’re afraid to relinquish our illusion of control. The sheep need to be sheared of their cynicism.

Our God is not one of confusion. He has given us revelation in the form of his Word and has therefore given us what is required to interpret it properly. Otherwise, why bother? Why not speak with the voice of the wind, scrawl letters in clouds, or peek out from breakfast toast? None of these reasons–man’s lack of wisdom, his faulty methodology, corruption in the church, etc., etc.–are valid for assuming that Scripture is not clear and understandable. They should also not be used to defend the placing of oneself in a position of authority, even superiority, over the text. A Christian needs to come to the Word of God in humility, as a student, not a critic. Make no mistake, all of us have fallen prey to such foolishness.

A piano needs to be tuned about once a year. Mine hadn’t been tuned in decades, so he recommended another tuning in six months. There’s no one-time adjustment for a piano, just like there’s no one-time theological calibration for the Christian life. Sanctification is a process that takes a lifetime. In that process, we need to be constantly going back to the Scripture and reevaluating our ideas and practices in light of its truth. We need to be always reforming, always tuning to truth.

What a blessing it would be if we could tune to Scripture in such a way that we could hear the plink of a faulty message with the same precision my piano tuner can catch a flat. Let’s get so acquainted with the Word of God that we can tune by ear. “Whoever has ears, let them hear.”

* For those few who noticed that little asterisk and just couldn’t help yourselves, you just had to know…yes, you, I’m talking to you! Didn’t you read the implied warning in not falling down rabbit holes? Stop wasting your time with things that draw your attentions and affections away from Christ. If you’re more passionate about [fill in latest obsession here] than you are about reading and meditating on the Word, then you need to reevaluate your priorities. If [ ___ ] is the thing you think the most often about and can’t wait to talk about, then you have an idol problem on your hands.⁺

⁺ You, again? Don’t be idle. Here’s how to deal with an idol:

1. Burn it.
2. Bury it.
3. Just go read 1 Corinthians 10:1-11:1 and repent.

Until next time, salutations & selah.