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one person to another or a group.  This was the very foundation of the church, because there were no written chronicles of the life
and times of Jesus of Nazareth.  According to Lee Stroebel in The Case For Christ, the earliest of the Gospels was written no less than
20 years after the crucifixion and probably closer to 40, and we know the New Testament itself was compiled by what amounted to a
Holy Editorial Committee sometime in the 4th century after Jesus’ birth.  Though placed after the Gospels in the volume we call the
Christian Bible, most of the Epistles, including Romans, were written before the Gospels, and certainly all before they were compiled
(and as far as I know, not one of the Epistles mentions Jesus as having been born of a virgin....hmmm).
So it's obvious that "the word of God" does not mean "the Bible" in this context.  It would be an illogical jump, however, to
exclude the written Bible from Paul's statement, just because it didn't exist at the time --that would be the logic that says modern music
has no place in the 21st century church.  What it does say is that the Bible is not and cannot be the sole, or even primary, source
of the word of God which gives us faith.  Verbal testimony by mouth preceded verbal testimony by book.  What else would have
converted all those folks at Pentecost?  Those super-devout followers of the Way of Christ in the original church of Jerusalem?  Paul
himself was a hardcore Christian-hater until, it is said, he was converted, not by a preacher, but by a vision/visitation of the Man
Himself.  What was it that touched hearts like his if not the words of the Bible? (The Holy Spirit? Did I hear that from the Christian
audience?  Ah yes, we're getting warmer.)

For now, I'll leave that open and interject with those two voices of Christotheism I referred to yesterday.

The first came to me through Phillip Yancey's Soul Survivor (which is subtitled, "How
Thirteen Unlikely Mentors Helped My Faith Survive The Church" and is outstanding).  
He tells of this anecdote by the famous Trappist monk and author Thomas Merton :

"In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the heart of the shopping
district, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the realization that I loved all those
people, that they were mine and I was theirs, that we could not be alien to one
another even though we were total strangers...though 'out of the world'
[monks] are in the same world as everybody else, the world of the bomb, the
world of race hatred, the world of technology, the world of mass media...and
all the rest."

Yancey interjects with,

"That odd moment became an epiphany for Merton, who went on to say that
the function of solitude is to realize some things --the unity of the human
race, the wonder of life, the glorious irreproducibility of any one person-- with
a clarity that would be impossible to anyone completely immersed in the world
rather than perched on the edge, observing."

Then Merton jumps back with the clincher:

"There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun."

Now, there is plenty of corroboration for most of this in the Christian Bible, if one is willing to search for it and read between the lines
when he gets there.  Does everyone shine like the sun, or just Christians, who have been "saved?"  Biblians who are open to the idea
that everyone does usually point to the "God made man in His image" verse in Genesis, but I've heard too many of them assert that non-
Christians are "spiritually dead" to accept that this is a widely-held Biblian belief.  Are we to love everyone we see at, say, the corner of
Fourth and Walnut in Louisville?  Verily the Gospels do say that Jesus exhorted us to "love one another, as my Father has loved you,"
though the Epistles often use the annoyingly vague word "brethren" as those whom God compels us to love, leaving room for Biblians
to interpret it as "other Christians" or "the body of Christ," everyone else be damned I suppose (I still cringe whenever I hear the
narrow interpretation in church).

But the part that I italicized, if in fact these were the words of Mr. Merton reported by Mr. Yancey and not just the author's
take, well, I ain't no Biblical scholar of course, but I gare-on-tee there ain't anything in the Christian Bible about the unity of the
human race.  That's starting to sound almost.....Unitarian!  According to Biblians, we aren't even united in sin under Adam anymore,
since Jesus washed about a third of us clean.  So Tom Merton has clearly overstepped his Biblical bounds with that crazy idea.

But did he overstep the Word of God?

Here's the other example, it's much shorter.  This one is from Gen-Xer Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz, a great collection of
essays on Christian spirituality, some of which are fairly eccentric.  He said somebody once asked Mother Teresa "how she summoned
the strength to love so many people.  She said she loved people because they are Jesus, each one of them is Jesus, and this is
true because it says so in the Bible."

Excuse me?  Back that up, Mama T.  Everyone is Jesus?  All those poor little Hindu wretches you took care of in Calcutta are Jesus?  
And this is in the Bible???  (Can't you just picture our friend from Georgia going up to Mother Teresa and shouting "BOOK,
CHAPTER, VERSE!...ma'am.")

I don't know if she is referring to the "God's image" idea too (and believe me, it is my Christotheistic opinion that that verse
is superloaded with meaning that most churches haven't even begun to explore, let alone teach), or some other place in
the Bible that I haven't found.  I don't think anyone in my church has found it either, and there are some folks who have
probably read through it all once a year or more since the day they were "born."  So I'll say that this idea, though it may have
found its germination in the scriptures, probably grew to maturity somewhere else, and therefore, Biblians, beware: I don't think you
are authorized to believe it.

But was she really out of synch with how God sees us?

Before we try to answer these questions, let's look at the Christian background that Thomas Merton and Mother Teresa were coming
from.  Both were Catholic; both were raised up in the time when all authorized Catholic services were conducted in Latin;  I'm not sure
how much Bible reading either would have done in their formative years, when they found their faith, since I don't know when Bible
reading by parishioners came into vogue in the Roman Catholic Church , but both were by no means evangelicals; both spent much of
their adult lives in "cloistered" positions (recall Mr. Yancey's words about solitude).

The picture I get is of two highly devout Christians whose faith was not primarily Bible-based.  You can bet  that neither ever attended
a Calvary-style Bible study anyway, with its comfortable routine of pray-sing-meet&greet- listen to sermon-pray-go home.  That just
wasn't their style, and I doubt it would be if they were here in 21st century America too.

(I should also point out, however, in case the point gets missed, that the other extreme --where the Roman Catholic
Church of antiquity would keep the Bible in the exclusive possession of the clergy and suppress it from parishioners, to
the point of torturing and killing those who refused to renounce their God-given right to read the scriptures-- is
reprehensible beyond belief and absurd on its face.  That was nothing but politics, pure power and control, plain and
simple.  The distrust of the Roman church that continues today is due in large part to this monstrosity.)

Not everyone is a Thomas Merton fan --he's too mystical for some, too self-promoting for others-- but I don't know of any
Christian, Catholic or Protestant, who denies that Mother Teresa was with God when she served the poor of India.  It is
probably close to a universal opinion that she exemplified the heart of Christ, as much as anyone has in our time.  Friends
from the Ashland church have told me that she and "Passion" man Mel Gibson are fine examples of "born-again
Catholics," a combination that must seem as strange to them as "reptilian cows" judging by the way it comes off their
tongues.

So we are left to tussle with that question: was Mother Teresa in accord with the word of God in saying that each person she attended
to was Jesus?  That'll hafta wait till morning --I've got 401 miles of Wyoming to sleep off.   HC--Pine Bluffs, Wyo.


© 2004 by Hermit Crab
a Fish Out Of Water production






Next--Chapter 4
Non-Christians are not children of God?
Them's fightin' words to many Christians like
Mama T.
(Photo courtesy of the Asia Partnership for
Human Development, www.aphd.or.th)
www.thomasmerton.org
www.aaronhuey.com