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| Photo courtesy of SustainUS / flickr |
This is a strange time we are living in. The Bible talks about the people who do what is right in their own eyes. Which interpreted means—my truth may not be your truth. There is no objective reality. Appearance is everything. There are no hard and fast rules—everything is fluid. You can’t trust…And I’ll let you fill in the blanks:
Democrats...
Republicans...
The Media....
TV noise...
Liberals...
Conservatives...
church...
Muslims...
Illegals. The list of our suspicions is endless today.
Yet it would be a dangerous world without guard rails, speed limits, standards for medicines, and warnings on our food labels. Even in this trust-less age there are some things that we do trust. Those who trust no one and are suspicious of all have serious pathological problems.
One day a friend saw W.C. Fields reading the Bible. He asked, “W.C. what are you doing?” “I’m reading the Bible.” “Why?” the man asked. “Because I am looking for loopholes.” From time to time we all keep searching for the loopholes which can set us free from whatever it is we feel ties us down and goes against our prejudices. And if we can find some minor verse in the Bible that can punctuate these feelings—we feel like we have won something. But through the years we have discovered loophole after loophole. The list is endless. We once felt the world was flat. We once believed the sun revolved around the earth. We once believed in stoning adulterers—especially women. We once believed black folk were inferior, that gays were depraved, that women should be submissive to their husbands, that poor people were lazy and all foreigners were suspicious, atheists or church folk were naive and stupid and that America could do no wrong. All our politicians were corrupt and the future was a dead-end street.
Jim Wallis of Sojourners Magazine sat down one day, took a pen knife and cut out all the passages the Bible that dealt with the poor. And when he was finished he would hold the book up and say: “This is an American Bible.” The loopholes made the book smaller indeed.
We all are looking for loopholes. Yet a faith or a philosophy of life that only deals with what suits us is a small and paltry thing. Once someone asked little boy about his house. He said it wasn’t too large and then added: “There are ten kids in our family and one bathroom—you gotta have rules.”
We may not like the rules but without laws, statutes and regulations we would be in an enormous mess. Maybe one of our problems is that we are trying with our loopholes too suspend rules that make life fairer for everyone.
Lloyd Douglas was a popular writer in the last century. He told of visiting a violin teacher one day and asked him what was the good news for that day. The old music teacher went over to a tuning fork that was suspended by a cord from the ceiling. He struck the tuning fork with a mallet. The violinist turned to his friend and said, “That is the good news for today.” He hit the tuning fork again, telling his friend, “That sound is an ‘A’. It was an ‘A ‘ all day yesterday. It will be an ‘A’ all day tomorrow, next week and for a thousand years. The soprano upstairs may sing off-key, the tenor next door may flat his high notes, the piano across the hall may be out of tune, Noise is all around us. But, my friend, that is an ‘A’.”
There is noise everywhere today. But the loopholes are not the answer to our dilemma. To pare down the truth will only make a leaky vessel. And none of us want this great boat to sink.
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| photo by mofesta / flickr --Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com |
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