Bible: Breath of Life or Smothering Weight

After all these years, the Bible remains a bestselling book.  For many, it is a source of life and inspiration.  For some, it is a window through which the revelation of God shines. For others, it can be a smothering weight.

I can’t remember a time when I did not read the Bible.  I still have my first Bible, which I received as a Christmas present when I was five years old.    My name is written on the presentation page, in pencil, in my father’s handwriting.  It is the only example I have of his handwriting.  I cherish that Bible. 

That cherished copy is not the only Bible I own.  I’ve done my share to make the Bible a bestseller.  I have Bibles of various versions and translations and formats, including several in digital format.  Yes, this old guy can whip out his iPhone and quickly search the Bible for just the right passage.

Almost everyone I know speaks of cherishing and honoring the Bible.  They should.  It is sacred.  Of course, the use to which we put it is not always sacred.  

Mark Twain shared a vivid example of the poor and wrong use of the Bible.  As a young boy, he saw a man shot.  The man was later carried into a house.  There the young Twain observed the man dying.

. . . the great family Bible spread open on the profane old man’s breast by some thoughtful idiot, and rising and sinking to the labored breathings, and adding the torture of its leaden weight to the dying struggles . . . .  In all the throng of gaping and sympathetic onlookers there was not one with the commonsense enough to perceive that an anvil would have been in better taste there than the Bible, less open to sarcastic criticism, and swifter in its atrocious work.  (Harriet Elinor Smith, et. al., editors, Autobiography of Mark Twain:  The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1, (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2010) Kindle Edition, location 4519.)

I’ve seen the Bible used as an anvil . . . children forced to read it and/or memorize verses as punishment . . . preachers and other authority figures pulling verses out of context to prove their point, not to mention to get their way.  Wrongly used, the Bible can crush the life out of a person as surely as an anvil laid across the chest.  

When used as it was meant to be used, the Bible is a book that opens to us the wonder of a Creative God who never gives up on rescuing a people who continually seek to be gods unto themselves.  It conveys the story of the Man of Power, who bowed to become servant to those who would call Him Lord.  It opens the door to a way of living that leads to life.

Twain said of the incident above, “In my nightmares I gasped and struggled for breath under the crush of that vast book for many a night.”  How we view and use the Bible has a lasting impact on our own lives.  How we view it and use it in relationship to others may determine whether they find it to be the Breath of Life or the smothering weight of an anvil. 

(Also to be published in The Henry County Local, January 11, 2012.

It's Christmas Time Again

My sister and I grew up in a home in which we were loved and where all our needs were met.  Growing up as we did, Carolyn and I saw Christmas as a magical time of the year.  For us, the magic began as soon as that first Christmas catalog from Sears, Roebuck & Company or Montgomery Ward arrived at our home.  We spent hours studying those catalogs, circling those items we just had to have!  We didn't always get all we wanted, but Christmas morn always brought joyous surprises.  Oh, the magic of going to bed and waking up to find gifts under the tree!

As I grew into adulthood, I thought such magic would never come again.  How wrong I was!  I could write about the magic of many Christmases, but this one is so much like others that it will suffice to demonstrate that the magic of those early years has given way to something better--the mystery of Christ among us.  Of course, I've known of the mystery of Christ among us for a long time.  I knew of it as a child.  Today, I know the mystery.

That I know the mystery is due in large part to the amazing congregation with which I've spent more than three decades.  Their actions remind me again and again of the real meaning of Christmas.  Consider just these three examples:

1. For the past two winters, this congregation has chosen to provide new winter coats for every child in our local school who needed one.  By the time this season ends, our people will have provided over 100 children with new, not gently used, coats.
2. Standing just outside the sanctuary is our Giving Tree.  Each year, volunteers, working with our local school and social service providers, gather the names of children whose parents lack the means by which to provide presents for them.  The Giving Tree is decorated with ornaments that indicate the gender of the child, age, and the gift desired (including sizes for clothing).  Church members take an ornament, buy the gift, and return it unwrapped.  The gifts are then taken to the parents, who are able to wrap them and present them to their children as gifts from them. 
3. For the past several years, a church member has visited with me early in December.  We exchange pleasantries and enjoy catching up with each other.  As our time comes to an end, the church member hands me an envelope and says, "I know that as a pastor you come in contact with lots of folks who could use a little extra help.  I've been blessed.  Use this to bless others."  Inside I will find more one hundred dollar bills than I've handled all year. The member attaches only two stipulations to the generous gift: (a) Recipients are not to know from whom it came; and (b) I am not to tell the donor who the recipients were.

The magic of Christmas has given way to the mystery.  According to Matthew's Gospel, the angel who visited Joseph told him that the child Mary would bear was to be called Emmanuel, God with us.  I believe God is with us.  I believe because I see evidence of the Kingdom in this little community in which I am privileged to live and serve.

CHRISTMAS!  What a glorious way to begin a new church year!

November 22, 1963

On November 22, 1963, my childhood vanished.  Although I was a freshman in high school, I would never see the world in quite the same way I had seen it prior to hearing the news that President Kennedy had been shot while riding in a parade in Dallas, Texas.

John F. Kennedy was in 1961 the youngest man ever elected to the Office of the President of the United States of America.  In a tumultuous time, so much hope rested on the shoulders of this young man--probably far too much hope.  Our elected leaders never can produce all they promised or all we hoped they would produce, but there were signs that good things were in store.  New voices were being heard.

Then across the nation a shot was heard, and a nation wept.

In many ways, President Kennedy's death united the country, at least for a few days, as nothing else could have done.  We grieved as a people--grieved for a young widow and her children and grieved for ourselves as we were forced to remember that being a free people did not mean we were free from violence and death.

On this 48th anniversary of President Kennedy's death, I grieve again--for us.  We have not learned.  We have not learned that freedom involves risk, including the risk of violence.  We have not learned that our hope rest in One greater than any or all elected leaders.  We have not learned to engage our elected leaders and DEMAND that they put the well-being of our nation and its people, including it's poorest people, ahead of their own--that they become the public servants they were elected to be.  I grieve . . .

. . . but I hope.  I hold to the hope that we shall rise to a higher way of life . . . that we will both demand better from those we elect to office and that we will live better that our calls to them might be heard.

Guess Who Is Looking for You

My cousin Rick didn’t mean to get lost.  He didn’t mean to end the day scared and hungry or with his parents and the community in a panic.  He just walked off one day, going out for an adventure, going out for an adventure for which he was not dressed properly.  He wore his diaper. 

Among family and community, there was a sense of panic.  The search was on.  Fields and roads were being walked.  The local crop duster took to the air, flying over the fields, looking for some sign of the missing boy.  It was near evening when word came that Rick had been found, found but not yet rescued.

Rick had not, as it was thought, walked off alone.  He had been accompanied by the family’s two dogs.  When the would-be rescuer found my cousin, he could not get near him.  The dogs didn’t know the rescuer, and Rick was too young to know or to tell them that the rescuer was a good man.  The dogs stood between Rick and anyone who tried to get to him.  They so stood until my Rick’s dad arrived. 

Lots of people just walk off, some in search of adventure and others because they are already lost.  There are others who are walked off, taken from where they are to where they would not go by others.  At the end of the day, how one becomes lost no longer matters.  It is being lost that matters, and there are very few experiences worse than being lost.

Perhaps you are among those who understand the terror of being lost because either you have been lost or you are lost.  If so, you know how utterly hopeless the lost become. 

I’m not using lost in the manner in which it is often used in Christian circles.  We’ve cheapened that word as we have cheapened so many other good words—grace, hope, mercy, love, etc.  When I speak of lost, I’m talking about the sense of being totally separated from all that is good and sound, of being alone and frightened even of ourselves, of being alive but without any sense of purpose or direction, and of being damned with no hope of rescue, much less redemption.

I’ve known some lost people, and I’ve known some good people who thought they knew the solution to the lost people’s predicament.  He/She just needs to find Jesus.  These folks mean well, but they do not understand the nature of being lost.  When one is lost, truly lost, he/she can’t find Jesus, or anything else.  Oh, they may stumble across something or someone or maybe even Jesus, but whatever is in their path was there before they found it and stumbled over it.  In the midst of being lost, that over which they stumble is sometimes just another frustration and pain in the dark.

The saved or the found, to use another misused word from our faith, are not those who find Jesus.  The saved/found are those who have been found by Jesus—Jesus as in God in all the Divine fullness.  Ezekiel, that prophet with the wild visions, got it.  He saw people who were lost everywhere he looked.  The people he saw were cut off from all that gave meaning, direction, purpose, and hope to their lives.  He knew that the difference between being lost and found was the willingness to be found, not dogged determination to find one’s own way out and home.

Of the lost—then and now, God said, “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God.  I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak. . .” (Ezekiel 34:15-16).

For too long, I thought I had to find God.  How refreshing to do know that God is the One looking for me.  Even I shall be found!

I Went to Prison

I went to prison Thursday, the Kentucky State Reformatory.  It wasn’t my first experience with prison.  Over the years, I’ve seen the inside of several prisons.  Yesterday’s experience was not my first with the Kentucky State Reformatory.

Fifteen years ago, I stood at the entrance facing two guards, stout no-nonsense men who were all business.  They told me to empty my pockets.  “Of everything,” one guard said.  I did, placing all the items from my pocket in a plastic bowl.  They shoved a clipboard in front of me and told me to sign my name.  I was patted down and a third guard appeared and told me to follow him.  Another guard walked behind us.  I stood facing the first of several barred gates through which I would pass.  The lead guard spoke into his radio and the door opened, leading to another.  The process was repeated several times before I was led into a sparsely furnished room and told where to sit.

I can still recall the feeling of dread and fear.  I was inside the belly of the prison.  The world I had known was barred gates away and inaccessible.  How does a person survive this, this being locked up, away from all that matters?  Locked in my thoughts, I almost missed hearing the last of those barred gates opening.  A guard led in a prisoner, dressed in prison drab.  He was the inmate I had come to visit.

Yesterday’s experience was very similar to the first time. I was having the same thoughts as I had fifteen years before.  This time I wasn’t there to visit anyone.  I was there as a member of the Kentucky State Police Citizens’ Academy Alumni.  We were being given a tour of the facility by a Deputy Warden.  For the next two hours, we walked among the prison population, which included men guilty of minor felonies, drug related crimes, sex crimes, armed robbery, assault, and murder.  We saw the area that housed the general population—meaning those men who had recently entered and many who never managed enough good behavior days to earn the right to move to “better” accommodations.  We walked through the prison hospital and past the psychiatric ward.  We stood in the middle of the dining hall as prisoners made their way through the lunch line and sat to eat their meals.  They are allotted twenty minutes for a feast that put my memory of school lunches in a new perspective. 

We walked through heavy rain to make our way from one building to the next.  We walked as the prisoners walked, sans umbrella, umbrellas being too easily transformed into weapons. At last we made our way to the “honors dorm.”  The primary difference between the other dorms and the “honors dorm” is fresh paint and wider hallways, and the possibility of earning the right to a private cell—a cherished dream for many.  The cells are approximately nine feet by six feet.  The typical cell includes a double bunk bed (metal frame and a four inch mattress), a plastic chair, and a small shelf.  “We try to match up the cellmates,” the Deputy Warden told us.  Unless there is physical danger for a cellmate, matched cellmates must stick it out for six months no mattered how poorly they may have been matched.  Imagine spending six months in a nine-by-six cell with a guy you can’t stand.  It must seem like a lifetime.

The one bright spot in the prison was the GRRAND program (Golden Retriever Rescue & Adoption of Needy Dogs) involvement by some of the inmates in the “honor dorm.”  Prisoners who qualify are given rescued dogs for which they assume full responsibility.  They house the dogs in their cell.  They feed, groom, and train the dogs until they are ready for adoption.  One prisoner told us, “This program has changed my life.  It gave me something to care about and to invest myself in.  It’s given me a better outlook in here and hope for the future.”  He added, “The only downfall is that I cry my eyes out each time I have to give up a dog.”

Everyone ought to go to prison.  It would change your attitude about prisons and prisoners.  I’ve been to several prisons.  There may be “luxury” prisons, but I have not seen one.  Oh, but someone will say, they get bed and board, exercise rooms, basketball courts, and cable TV.  Well, as for bed and board, the bed is “boardy” and the bread is pretty common.  There are exercise rooms and basketball courts, but how much exercise and basketball can you stand day after day year after year?  Some of the inmates do have cable TV, but the taxpayer doesn’t foot that bill, and the TV is tiny.  The TV and the cable must be paid for by the inmate.  The inmate gets his money in one of two ways: (1) Someone outside pays into his prison account from which he can spend no more than $100.00 per month—the one exception being the purchase of the TV; or (2) he “earns” it at the pay rate of 80 cents per hour.  The “salary” paid to the inmates does not come from tax dollars.  It comes from the profit made from the prison industry and the prison store. 

Thanks to programs offered in the prison, many of which are highly dependent on volunteer assistance, some prisoners do better themselves and reenter society with an opportunity of bettering both their lives and ours. 

By the way, the prisoner I visited fifteen years ago was released a year later.  He went to a men’s shelter, found a job, made enough money to get his own apartment.  Today he still lives in that same apartment and continues to be a law-abiding citizen.  Sometimes the system works.

Church Defined

For more than 40 years, I have been serving as a pastor of Baptist churches, 32 of those years at Eminence Baptist.  On more than one occasion, I've sought to define church.  There are lots of good definitions out there, and most of them give some understanding of what a church is. Yet. . . .

When I'm asked about my church, I often respond, I pastor one of the most mixed-up congregations I know.  We have people who are theologically ultraconservative and others who ultraliberal and a bunch more in between.  We have some folks with money (though no super rich) and folks with almost no money and the some in between.  We have educated folks and uneducated, homeowners and renters and people who live in public housing.  We have folks who are morally squeaky clean and others who are trying to find their way out of the wilderness.  We have teetotalers and social drinkers and not a few recovering alcoholics and some whom we hope will recover.  We really do have all this.  Yet, we are church.  We gather for worship; we work to provide coats for children in our local school; we pray together; we minister together; and, on occasion, we argue--sometimes over something important.

Most of all, we're just church.  We are present to each other and we try to be present to and obedient of our Lord's teachings--as best we understand them.

So, what is church?  I like the definition given by Bill Leonard, the James and Marilyn Dunn Professor of Church History and Baptist Studies at the School of Divinity, Wake Forest University, in a recent article published by Associated Baptist Press.

. . . church is not a place you go depending on the personality of the preacher (or lack thereof). It is a community of faith composed of a strange assortment of sinners held together, not by common creeds -- they have believed many or none at all -- not by common doctrines -- they have believed contradictory ones with a passion -- but by faith in Christ grounded in Scripture and the life-giving breath of the Holy Spirit.

Churches that fit Bill's definition can be messy places, but they are places alive with love for our Lord and for each other.

Watching Our Words

I confess to being Facebook fan.  While I don’t spend a lot time on Facebook, I do find it an interesting place to visit.  Recently, a friend posted the following: “If you didn’t hear it with your own ears or see it with your own eyes, don’t invent it with your small mind and share it with your big mouth.”

It’s good advice . . . but it doesn’t go far enough.  The Apostle Paul wrote to the Philippians about the importance of getting along and being of the same mind.  In the fourth chapter he addressed two women, Euodia and Syntyche, who were obviously not getting along with each other.

He wanted them “to be of the same mind in the Lord.”  Why would Paul be so frank as to cause their names to be called out loud in public?  The relationship of any two people in the church affects the whole.  This was not a private matter between Euodia and Syntyche, whatever they may have thought.  This was a church, dare I say, a Christ, matter.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Euodia and Syntche.  One of the things I’ve thought is that the names called out in public could just as easily have been Edgar and Sam.  Being at odds and saying things to and/or about another is not limited to women.  Being at odds with a fellow believer and saying things to each other we ought not to say and saying things about each other and repeating half-truths or even truths that need not be repeated is common to both genders.

Words are powerful.  I would like to believe that we sometimes forget this, thinking that otherwise we would not say some of the hurtful things we say to each other and we would not spread gossip.  Of course, it may be that we know the power of our words, and we use them hurtfully on purpose.

We can’t always control what we hear.  Words accidentally overheard can hurt us.  When such words are spoken, we need to practice patience: count to ten . . . take a breather . . . put ourselves in “time-out” until we can respond calmly and rationally.  Often what we hear another say is not what the other meant.  Taking time to hear the concerns, needs, and emotions behind the words is necessary for good communication. 

We can’t always control what we hear, but we can control what we do with what we hear.  Things we hear that are untruths, particularly about others, should be gently, but strongly countered.  When someone begins their conversation with us by saying, “I don’t know if it’s true or not, but . . . ,” we should stop them before they finish.  If stop them we can’t, we need to lock their message away and never, never repeat it. 

When others speak to us or we overhear them speaking out their anger and hurt, we should treat that as confidential information—information that is never ours to repeat to anyone.  Chances are people who speak such words will soon regret it.  While they can’t take the words back from those who heard them, how much better their lives and the lives of others would be if we who heard them never repeated them.  There is only one proper response to people who speak out of their hurt and anger, and that response should always be one of reaching out to comfort them and to walk alongside them.

We can’t always control what we hear, but we can control what we do with what we hear.  For each other’s sake and for the sake of the gospel, we must take control of our words.

When Paul urged the women to be of the same mind, he was saying more than get along.  When he wrote be of the same mind in the Lord, he was reminding them and the church that they were to “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”

Being of the same mind as Christ means doing more than suggested by the message I found on Facebook.  Even when we hear it with our own ears and see it with our own eyes, there are some things that should not be repeated! While we should practice truth-telling, even more we should practice charity. There are things we hear and see that are true that if shared with others only serves to make things worse for those about whom they are true.

How much hurt and pain would be avoided were we to follow Paul’s admonition?