The Top 100 Charts

When we are out on the open road, we all love to turn the radio up and tune into our favorite station or search in our iPod for a song that most rightly fits our mood, the journey, and the destination. Undoubtedly, as we spin the wheel-of-song-fortune long enough, eventually we land on “the song.” When we hear “the song,” it grips us and captures us up into its swells. The song’s tune is much more than a group of notes punching out sound through our audio speakers. This song’s theme is iconic. It gathers us and it calls us into the world it has created within its form. Soon we find ourselves not only singing along in the present, but remembering the moments from the past that were also sound-tracked by this melody. We remember the special instances, the victories, the holidays, the history. We attach personal, generational, and historical meaning to these simple recordings.

There are songs that have the power not only to equip us for a good car ride, but they also become so powerful that, like My Generation by The Who, they come to define actual points in history. Jimi Hendrix defined a period with All Along the Watchtower; U2’s With or Without You formed relationships, and again we find that a song’s influence not only carries the ability to encapsulate a generation, but also to become the universal love song for romantic relationships all around the world.

Songs influence people on different levels. For example, classical compositions such as Gioachino Rossini’s Morning Song became powerfully attached to events like a sunrise in a cartoon and are forever associated with this in our minds. J.S. Bach’s Joy of Man’s Desiring is iconic in religious settings, as well as Handel’s Messiah, for they have the ability to move the soul toward thoughts of God’s grandeur and beauty. Even today on a simpler and more popular level, we have songs like Beyoncé’s Single Ladies (Put a Ring on it) that defines not only a mantra for a new generation, or a relationship, but promotes a dance craze, much like Chubby Checker’s The Twist. People resort to mimicking it, promoting it, and stylizing themselves after the phenomenon. In the briefest of moments, the fad passes, or ceases to be “cool,” and the next hit artist draws the nations to attention with a new hook and beat.

Melody

What all this boils down to is the power of a song’s melody. Melody is the part of a song that grabs us. It’s what songwriters call the “memorable hook.” It grips our attention in any moment with its catchiness and causes the song to be easily remembered. As the audience, we carry these melodies in our heads, and we sing them throughout the day at apropos times. Sometimes these melodies become so lodged in our brains that we can’t help but think of anything BUT their seductive tune.

It’s not only the audience that corrals around such a hook. The band does as well. The artist chooses lyrics that fit the melody’s tone, imagery, and sound—for to put a happy melody with a sad hook would be unthinkable. This melody is like a magnet to which all the other parts cling. When the hook is written, the drums emphasize it with the beat and the piano, electric guitar, bass guitar, and synthesizers surround it, undergird it, and play around it in a way that propels it out into the audience’s ear with intensity. The sound engineer pushes it up in volume so everyone can hear it, the dancers punctuate it and make it visual, and the light show, screens, hype, and atmosphere enliven the crowd to draw into and be captivated by the experience. This is the power of melody. It’s the original song that is written and formed in hopes that all involved might come and form themselves around it.

Trinity Song

In Genesis 1:26, God in Himself is and was the first melody that has ever been heard. God is heard in these first few verses in Scripture resounding like an audio concert saying, “let us make man in our image.” His melody and hook exploded into all of creation and became the song to which the whole world would conform. Everything in land, sea, and sky reflected, sounded, tuned to, and painted the nature of the Creator. It is in this beginning time that the song of creation is profoundly the most clear.

God’s unity in heaven propelled this melody forth. He did not just sing this melody alone, but He sounded it in a Triune chord that shook the darkness. His use of the language “us” in Genesis 1 defined God’s ensemble as plural, and in this dramatic act of collaboration He sparked and implemented His new idea.

Yet even in this “plural-ness” of God’s harmony, the most resounding claim God makes about Himself in the Bible is that in His plurality He is also One. [27] He exists in melody. So how can this Trinity the Scripture speaks of as being comprised of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit also be one? It seems throughout the centuries that this is the much debated question. This mystery of the Trinity, the 3-in-1, has been likened to so many things, and every analogy leaves the human mind puzzled as to how to resolve the tension.

The concept of music can inform our thinking about this conundrum. Though there is one melody line within music, one can surround each individual note with two other notes and create what is called a triadic chord—or harmony. Each note surrounding the melody makes up a 3-note triad and allows musicians to sound one note together, and in unison and uniqueness, and still have the pitches intertwine with one another—and this chord makes sense. This is the foundation upon which all of music is built. The Trinity in like fashion, made up of “three tones, sound … none of them is in a place; or better, they are all in the same place, namely everywhere … no difference of places keeps them apart; yet they remain audible as different tones … the tones connected in the triad sound through one another.” [28]

In a very similar way to how music intertwines and holds conversation within itself, we can see the same kind of plural unity in the Trinity and in the human image that reflects His nature. We are made up of a mind (logic, reasoning), a heart/soul (life, emotions), and a strength (will and action) that all work together in one body to produce forward motion. If it is true that we have been given “the royal office or calling as God’s representatives and agents in the world, with granted authorized power to share in God's rule or administration of the earth's resources and creatures,” [29] then it would definitely be helpful to us to consider God’s nature before we determine how we are going to go about acting out ours. James K.A. Smith puts it this way, “we are commissioned as God's image bearers, his vice-regents, charged with the task of ruling and caring for creation, which includes the task of cultivating it, unfolding it in all its possibilities, in human making—in short through culture. Imaging God thus involves representing and perhaps extending in some way God's rule on earth through ordinary communal practices of human sociocultural life.” [30] We had better get started.

C.R.O.S.S.

The unity of the Trinity is fascinating, albeit mystical. It seems that if we are to ponder and try to understand such a complex being as God, we will only end up chasing a mere shadow of what is actual reality. Our quest to understand God, however, is similar to the quest that drives people to understand earth’s elements and the scientific periodic table. Though everything in all of creation demonstrates a plurality in containing multiple scientific elements that make up its fabric, we see within this multiplicity that there is singularity. A tree, a river stream, an egg, and a rock all contain a combination of elements, but they still make up one “thing.” In our search to explain how “three” is “one” we do not have to stretch very far into our imagination in which to do it. Into the very fabric of the universe, this plural-oneness is woven.

Though we cannot fully understand the way the Trinity works, I do believe we can derive some unifying principles in regards to how the Trinity holds together in their unique melodic plurality. The insights to be gained from our contemplation can provide us with some considerable insight into the human experience, informing us in how we are to image our Creator. In an effort to connect the complex themes of God’s character as expressed across the whole Bible, I’ll attempt an easy approach by using the acronym C.R.O.S.S. This acronym will serve as a brief encompassing framework for us to follow here in describing the image of God. It is suggested in this acrostic that the Trinity is predominantly united and intertwined in five ways as revealed in Scripture (all of which can be seen in Genesis 1-3 and in the totality of Bible):

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