The musical actors would sometimes improvise an act called Three Headed Broadway Star, where they'd have a theme and each guy would alternate singing one word at a time to make a full song. The production was often full of choppy tunes, side-splitting laughter, and awkward lyrical stories.
There came a day when I had an epiphany! I played my own private version of the Three Headed Broadway Star in my head, and the starring singers consisted of God, my dad, and "church". They would intermittently sing their word, only to be followed by the other of the triune voices, putting together one long, strange lyrical tune. Truly, it was as though the three melded into one voice.
The light bulb turned on as I realized this -
what God, my dad, and the church said were NOT one in the same.
"Well, duh!" some of you may be saying. But really, to me, this was an awakening!!! This is not to say that sometimes their voices didn't line up in harmony. They did sometimes. Yet, I still had confused "Thou shalt not chew gum in church" as God's rule. Why? Because all three voices held the same amount of weight in my eyes. If my dad told me something, it must be God's will. And if the church preached something, surely they would align it with God's Word. And if God said something, every parent and church member would definitely be teaching this truth. Right? The day I realized my parents were "human", fallible, was a great relief. For that matter, I awakened to the fact that the church was made up of broken, imperfect people, too. God was the only one who wouldn't say, "Whoops! Sorry about that! I made a mistake."
I had not given mankind a position of honor, but of godlike, unfailing clout. This was not a moment to rationalize leadership and avoid living under any kind of authority, but instead, it put their "voices" into proper perspective and raised God's voice to its appropriate place. All the years of hearing things said, such as, "You should never love yourself," or "Sunday School is as important as church" came under a new scrutiny. Who said that? I found a lot of times, it was not in the bible, but merely ideas put together by man. Many of them good ideas, but not "God's commandments".
Usually, a two-fer is a good deal. A three-fer an even better deal. Not in this case. It was time to reorganize the voices in my head. God speaks. People speak. Sometimes they match up. Other times they don't. And in a battle of Whose Line Is It Anyway, God's voice is now noticeably distinguished from all the rest instead of some strange three headed blob, vying for the next word.
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