Wanting to catch the news headlines over breakfast, I tuned in to an early morning TV program. The program hosts were just interviewing the winner of some kind of championship. I caught the words “air guitar” and that aroused my curiosity. I had once heard the term when a local air-guitar competition made the news. I was surprised to hear that “playing” the air-guitar is now a worldwide competition. Is it really going to be ranking up there with the Olympics and soccer’s World Cup?
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the air-guitar, let me assure you that it’s the easiest instrument in the world to “play”. No lessons are needed and all but the severely handicapped can “play” it. Of course, you and I might not win the world championships but if you don’t mind looking a little foolish you can certainly give it a go. Nobody will even be able to tell whether you are out of tune. Not even you!
The air-guitarist only plays a pretend instrument. The aim of the championships is to see who can best imitate the actions of a rock-guitarist without actually using a guitar. So competitors are judged – not on the quality of the music they produce – but on how well they simulate the actions of a guitarist. In a sense it is a musical mime – performed to an accompanying pre-recorded song. The champion air-guitarist being interviewed was decked out as a rocker and threw himself around the stage with a great deal of energy, all the while holding in his hands an imaginary guitar.
I couldn’t help wondering if the air-guitar isn’t a fitting symbol for much of our culture. It’s all style with no substance… image without content! For example: in many ways the air-guitar is not all that different from so many television programs called ‘reality television’ – everything from “Big Brother” to “Survivor”. It seems to me that in these programs people (as it were) throw themselves around with a great deal of energy but at the end of it all we wonder: Now what was that all about? Okay, they call it “reality television” but the reality is that it only imitates real life – like the air-guitar. The air-guitarist would be disqualified the moment he actually took up a real guitar.
Permit me to take that a little further! The writer of the Bible book Ecclesiastes states that life without God is meaningless. “Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless…!” In other words, all life without Jesus Christ is really nothing but an air-guitar competition. Today you can be ever so busy, devoting so much energy and effort into building your home and your businesses, creating your little empire and indulging in your favourite pastime. Perhaps your motto is: The one with the most toys wins! But come Judgment Day you will stand before God with empty hands. It will be as if life was but a charade… a mime… as if we had spent our lives playing the air-guitar. Come Judgment Day real life will be found only in a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Anything else is only a simulation of the real thing.
Of course, if you claim to be a Christian, it is also possible to be an “air-guitar Christian”. Air-guitarists go through the motions but they don’t actually make any sound. Air-guitar Christians go through the motions of worship but they don’t actually sing, they warm a pew but they don’t actually listen, they call themselves Christians but they don’t live that out in their daily work. It’s one thing to accuse our culture of hype… to critique it for having style but no substance… it’s far worse when those who name the name of Jesus are only miming an authentic Christian life. Air-guitar Christianity brings no glory to God, it does not challenge the world, nor does it save your soul.
John Westendorp