The Attack of the Bible Thumpers
By Jim Johnson
Click here to return to the Church Innovations web site.
“We has met the enemy, and he is us.” - Pogo
My friend Ed was waiting for me on his favorite bar stool the other morning as I unlocked and entered the back door of the Bull’n Bear Saloon to get ready for the day’s business. Ed, there from the night before (sometimes he sleeps on the couch upstairs if he’s “too tired” to drive home safely), swung around on his barstool and, as soon as I got within ear shot, said...
“Where were you when I needed you? I got attacked by a bible thumper yesterday! All I did was mention that I had just started reading the New Testament and off he went about the way he thought I was supposed to understand and believe it. He went and got a bible out of his car that had footnotes and cross references and explanations in the margins and dang near beat me to death with the fool thing.”
This had apparently been quite an ordeal for poor ol’ Ed. In his own reading, he had already “gotten through” the gospels and Acts, and was working on Romans when Mark, the “bible thumper,” attacked.
Now Ed, for those of you who may not know, is a weather-worn, set-in-his-ways 64 year old rancher who just got his first Bible - the Red Letter edition - last summer. He started reading the New Testament - also for the first time in his 64 years - shortly thereafter, and has delighted and taught (and sometimes made me simply shake my head) as he has come in to town for a few beers and given me his take on what he had been reading most recently.
“What’s God got against pig farmers, anyway?”
That was the first one, referring to when Jesus had cast out demons into a herd of pigs which had then rushed headlong into the sea and drowned. Ed felt kinda bad for the poor farmer who owned all of those pigs! “Raisin’ pigs ain’t all that wonderful in the first place,” he’d said, “without having some religious guy run ‘em off and drown your whole herd!” He also took note of the fact that, if you’re a fig tree that doesn’t bear fruit, you’d be better off if Jesus never came too close.
Other comments, though, have been a little more serious. The reason he got the book in the first place is that he thought it was time for him to “pay a little more attention to those red letters” after the death of his daughter, Mary, at the age of 33. It was real hard on him.
Now I mention Eddie because, unlike us, he has never been instructed in the matters of the Christian faith, never been taught “correct doctrine” or what he’s supposed to believe to be believing properly. And while the time will hopefully come for such instruction, what Ed needs now is not a correct and pure understanding of the Christian faith with “footnotes, cross references, marginal notations” and the like.
What Ed needs is peace.
Peace in the face of his daughter‘s death, and at the prospect of his own.
The peace that accompanies finally knowing the one who knows him! That one who actually has the power to give the life his life so dearly needs.
In short, what Ed needs right now is not to be properly taught about God, but to be gently introduced to God, his maker and redeemer.
It is typical among us who are the church, however, to be more accustomed to (and more comfortable with) “instructing in” rather than “introducing to.” I fear that this is because we have become ones who have a much closer relationship with what we believe than we do with the one in whom we believe.
“We has met the enemy, and he is us.” - Pogo
Part of the reason for this, I suppose, is that we who are confessional Christians have, of necessity from time to time, spent the better part of the last few centuries defining and protecting the particulars of what we believe, especially among our own. The result has been that we have become, in our every day experience, communities of shared doctrines more than communities of persons who have a shared relationship with God; Ones whose self- understanding has become that we are “confirmed in” our faith much more than that we are ones who are being “transformed by” our faith, or rather, by that one in whom we have faith. It is no wonder, then, that so many “evangelism programs” have fallen flat, both among church members and those to whom they are sent. If sharing our faith is “one beggar telling another beggar where there is bread,” the hungry ones aren’t likely to be too impressed with the telling of our favorite recipe for the baking of the stuff! That comes best after their bellies are finally full.
But “beggar to beggar” is not how we have come to typically look at sharing our faith, is it. In fact, one of the views that both “church people” and the “bar people” seem to share is that the “faith” which we seek to share is believing this or that about God, with the struggle, ever going on between them, being one of just what it is that one ought to believe. (Ed’s “bible thumping” adversary, Mark, seemed to care much less about whether Ed actually knew Jesus than he did that Ed believed the way Mark believed about Jesus.)
But contrary to the popular belief of either group, faith - as spoken of in the bible - is not believing in some thing like a doctrine or a creed, with a sustainable argument for why it is true. Faith - as spoken of in the Bible - is finally trusting some one - our risen Lord and God - often full in the face of our not understanding it all. It is often, in fact, both true and ironic that the greater faith is often shown, not by the lack of our questioning and doubt, but in the very face of it. For it is in these situations in each of our lives, either individually or communally, that all of our reasoning melts away and we find ourselves having simply to trust in the one who says, no matter what, that we can – that we have to - trust him with our very lives and the lives of those whom we love.
This is where peace is finally given, in a relationship with God who loves us enough to come after us. For the moment – at least for those first moments – it is all that needs to be said. One beggar telling another where there is bread. A mother or father singing “Jesus loves me” with their children. A friend telling a friend, at that right time, “this is what has helped me and given me peace in the midst of it all.” A bar owner telling a patron/friend of the hope that keeps him afloat as well, no matter how unruly the waters of living become.
Two or three years ago, on Christmas day, Cindy and her husband Bubba came with her sister to the campfire we have down by the river every Christmas day. She “really enjoyed it,” she said.
Just before this last Christmas, Bubba suffered a major heart attack and was suddenly gone.
When I saw her late this winter, she very nervously, and with tears in her eyes, asked me if she could ask me a question. Cindy wanted me to explain to her why God had taken Bubba from her.
A few months later - now working for us as a bartender - Cindy asked me a couple of questions about the Lord’s prayer. “What does the word ‘hallowed’ mean?” and “Is The Lord’s Prayer really the only way we are supposed to pray. I would think even God would get bored with that.”
I could have - in fact, I did - given her short answers to her questions, but I don’t think the answers are really what she is after.
Cindy lost her husband when they should have had decades more together, and she wants to talk to God about it, but she’s not sure how. She’s not even sure if God comes close enough to listen. But she needs to talk to God.
Do you see?
She doesn’t want to know about prayer. She wants to pray.
She doesn’t want to know about the peace of God. She needs that peace.
Nor do I think she wants simply to know about God.
Introductions shall be gladly made. And out of the relationship that follows, what she really wants to know will finally be answered by whom she has finally come to know.
Where she will go from there, God knows. That God will give her peace along the way, I’m pretty sure of. At least that’s what has happened with me.
Afgelaai op 30 Oktober 2007 by Partners in Innovation Vol 7, Issue 2, June 2007.