You’ve read the title and I know you already have someone in mind. Maybe it’s a regular at your church. Maybe it’s a friend or family member that goes with you every now and then. Or, as in my case, maybe it’s someone that was directly behind you at the last church service you attended.
- They can’t find a pitch even in the middle of a baseball game. *
- They think singing louder compensates for their lack of musical ability.
- They have terrible parents, because good parents would tell their tone-deaf children that they can’t sing. We have American Idol to thank for a generation of hopeful yet hopelessly tone-deaf teens who think they’re the next big thing when their whale sounds shouldn’t even be dignified with the term “music.” (HT: Matt Chandler)
According to the venerable Wikipedia, tone-deafness, also known as “amusia,” is a “hearing impairment [that] appears to be genetically influenced, though it can also result from brain damage.” So, those that suffer (though the argument could be made that we all suffer) from tone-deafness are either hosed by genetics or hosed by circumstance. Then again, aren’t we all hosed by the same two things?
Listed among the notable tone-deaf on Wikipedia are such luminaries as:
I’ve never heard any of them sing, and it’s difficult to imagine any of these men doing so anyways.
CC Image • 2-Dog-Farm
But, God bless ‘em, the tone-deaf sing. At least the ones at my church do. Maybe they know they’re terrible. Maybe they don’t have a clue. But they sing. They sing their bleating hearts out. Why?
Because they don’t care. They don’t care about the sound of their voice as it physically assaults the eardrums of every bystander. They don’t care that they don’t sound like everyone else. They don’t care that they may or may not be committing the eighth deadly sin—screechery.
They sing because the One who’s listening hears hearts more than tones, beliefs more than words, and sincerity more than posturing.
May we all remember this when offering our worship to a gracious God, whatever form that worship takes.
But.
The next time that tone-deaf guy sits behind you at church, make pained faces in his direction to see if he reacts negatively or stops singing completely. You’ll have won a small and meaningless victory while saving the rest of us from yet another bad American Idol audition.
On second thought, don’t do that. My favorite episodes of Idol all happen in the first three weeks.
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