It was Homecoming yesterday and the good folks at Westview invited me to preach. It was a joy. And a realization that I do miss it - the preparing and the preaching. Don't get me wrong, I'm loving the long-awaited-hard-earned freedom to up and run to see the grandbabies whenever the spirit moves. But the preaching is sweet. And the people are kind. Plus... there was a covered dish lunch complete Pearline Wells' 12 layer chocolate cake waiting after the service. It doesn't get much better. We dreamed of those lunches while we were away. We were not disappointed.
The sermon was a chance to indulge some of my recent thoughts. An opportunity to process things up in my head - filtered through scripture - washed and hung out with prayer. And distilled down to this thought: We have got too big for our britches. In the Southern vernacular. Do not worry, I said it better than than. I think/hope. This thought train left the station when I came across a statement a while back that just about took my breath away. I found this bit of profundity deep down an internet rabbit-hole - following tracks from an email to an article to a website to some more articles.... all the way down to the comments section - which, by the way, can be a scary and dangerous place to go. Leading to another realization... some people is crazy. On to the point - here's what I read: "We have come to think that we are smarter than God and nicer than Jesus." Better way of saying the britches thing. Sadly, there a ring of truth to it, if we're honest. And that thinking might be a clue as to how messed up things have gotten in this old world. Which brings the question: How did we get here?
Best I can figure, it's a combination of a couple of things - on top of human nature. After all, dear old Adam and Eve sure acted like they were smarter than God way back at the beginning. In addition to our bent toward pride, there's the modern-day unprecedented access to information. In less than 50 years we have gone from doing research using The World Book Encyclopedia to having an entire, virtually unlimited, data base little enough to carry in our pockets. Fifteen minutes on the YouTube and you can be an expert in almost anything. This is handy, to be sure, but also potentially hazardous. Because no matter what Snopes says, nobody is fact-checking the whole internet. There's this meme out there that says, "If it's on the internet, it must be true." And it's attributed to Albert Einstein, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Willie Wonka and Kermit the Frog. Or, "On the internet it is, true it must be." Yoda.
We are also more socially connected than ever before. And with that connection comes the opportunity to do some good. To show how nice we are from the comfort of our recliner. From Go Fund Me campaigns to putting the praying hands in the comments. These are good things – I can tell you I truly appreciate when someone does that for me. I do it all the time and I’m thankful for it. I find it funny that young Mr. Zuckerberg thought he was designing a tool for geeky boys to get dates but in the process he created the worlds’ largest prayer chain.
I'm not saying information and connection are inherently bad - the problem comes when we connect to the source of mis-information and disconnect from our most reliable source of in-formation. John Wesley called it "a most solid and precious system of Divine truth." He was talking about the Bible. Paul (Bible-Dude-Paul) told his protoge, Timothy, to turn to Scripture because it's useful in lots of ways so that God's people can become "proficient and equipped for every good work." (2 Tim 3:10-17) By the way, I think "proficient and equipped" are the antithesis of "smarter that God and nicer than Jesus." Then Paul writes in Hebrews that the word of God is alive and active and sharper than a sword - able to lay our thoughts and attitudes bare-naked before our Maker. (Hebrew 4:12-13) So basically, Scripture went from useful to surgical. And I think maybe we (the greater we - all of us who claim to be Followers) need some corrective surgery. Cosmetic in some places, transplant-level in others.
At this point in my sermon yesterday, I instructed Hubby - who was strategically seated near the door - to get ready to crank up the truck for a quick getaway for I was about to quit preaching and commence to meddling. Then I proceeded to pick apart a beloved framework of Methodist theology... the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. It's really quite a good paradigm overall, just that it's - in my opinion - gotten a little out of whack in recent years. Here's how it goes... there are 4 legs or sides to the quadrilateral: Scripture, Reason, Tradition and Experience. These all contribute to our understanding of theology... what we know of God. What we read in Scripture about God, our ability to use our brains to think about God, what our tradition has taught us about God and what our personal experience tells us about God. Pretty self explanatory and pretty astute. But... here's where I think we've got off the rails... these 4 should not bear equal weight. Even Wesley, who by the way never taught this quadrangle - some other guy put it together from studying about Wesley's movement, was clear that he believed Scripture preeminent. Put it this way - reason, tradition and experience are like little children: you cannot lock them in the trunk but you can't let them drive either. Here's why: Scripture is God-focused. Reason, Tradition and Experience are us-focused. They absolutely enhance our understanding of God but cannot dictate our understanding of God. Quick example... if our experience and tradition tell us that a father is cold and mean, then our reason might lead us to believe that the Father in scripture is cold and mean, in spite of the evidence that the nature of our Heavenly Father is kind and loving. We can even point to scripture to prove the point that God is mean because there are times when God seems harsh. Faith that is built on scripture influences reason, tradition and experience instead of the other way around.
If this is so, if the Bible is foundational and if it is to be relevant in our lives and by extension, in our world, then we have to take it seriously. We have to become sword-masters - to know what's in there and what's not and to speak out about both. We have to stop slicing and dicing and picking and choosing the parts we like and posting them on The Insta with a flower wreath around them, leaving out the parts that are hard. Now, I do appreciate a good verse in flowy script with some leaves and flowers. Just don't stop there. We gotta keep on digging. And wrestling when something riles us up. As long as we keep laying bare our thoughts and attitudes then - and only then - can God who is all-knowing-smart and Jesus who is died-on-the-cross-nice do a work in us... and in the world through us.
There's a lot more to say, but I'll stop here and leave you with a quote from East of Eden by John Steinbeck. “...Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among ideas the way a man rides white rapids in a canoe. But Tom got into a book, crawled and groveled between the covers, tunneled like a mole among the thoughts, and came up with the book all over his face and hands.”
My book is the Bible. And I want to be Tom. Selah.
PS... The good folks at Westview were kind and didn't run us off before we got to visit around the table with an overflowing plate of home- cooking and a piece of Miss Pearline's cake. God is good.
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