Swine Song

(This article originally appeared on One Flew Over the Church)

I was recently reminded of a conversation with an old sage. He had been having a theological discussion with a nice, but ignorant lady. He asked her, in the most polite way he knew, if she read the Bible much. “Read it, I’ve read it all, from Genesis to Revolutions” No kidding, the woman said “Revolutions”. I asked him what he said next. “Nothing”, he replied, “trying to reason with such a person is like trying to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig”.

Placed securely on the inside of your cranium is a mass of gray matter that God placed there to serve you as a sort of central processing unit. It has different components with different job descriptions. As a whole, this organ works day and night to control involuntary functions such as your breathing and heartbeat. During your waking hours it controls your voluntary actions such as walking, sitting or standing. There are many responsibilities for this little instrument that we call our brain. I want to look a little deeper at one of them.

Humans have the gift of abstract and complex thought. It sets us apart from the animal world. Complex decision making has a very broad definition. Human beings can use logic and reasoning to design bridges, analyze medical research on the human body, carry out exegesis of Scripture and even decide if it is or isn’t a wise time to release that bothersome fart.

The thing that bothers me is that even though we have this wonderful gift, so many ignore it completely. Many are content to submit to the logic of others. It reminds me of the witches in the “Clash of the Titans” that shared one “eye” to enable them to see. Christians do this with brains. They let people like James Dobson and Pat Robertson and the like tell them what to think. Now, I’m not throwing stones at anyone. This is the fault of the followers, not these people seen as leaders. I think James Dobson is a wonderful man and a good Christian and has some good ideas – I just want to weigh what he is saying before buying it hook, line and sinker.

I often hear my fellow protestants griping about Catholics, “I just don’t think I need a priest to go between me and God”. That is true, until something goes wrong. One tidbit of bad news and they start ringing the preacher’s phone off the hook. “I think it is a little preposterous to have that Pope guy speaking for God on Earth and all”. These same folks were dumbfounded the moment they learned Jerry Falwell had been found slumped over his desk, “what are we going to do now?”. Hypocrites. White-washed tombs. Brood of vipers, fit for Hell.

You see if God wanted us to just take marching orders, he would have only given cerebrums to the leaders. The rest would just have a cerebellum and a medulla oblongata so that we would keep breathing and wouldn’t fall over when we tried to walk somewhere. But he chose to give us all the gift of thought and reason. We have heard of great stewards of this gift such as Isaac Newton and C.S. Lewis, but they are dead now and we are blessed with scholars that specialize in “The Book of Revolutions”. In a time and in a country where there are probably more Bibles than people, why is it that Scriptural understanding seems to be nearing an all-time low? If we are truly going to make a difference in this world, we are going to have to learn how to think for ourselves.

Do you take your pastor’s word for it? Do you believe everything you read? Do you take all teaching as if it were the truth without question? Or do you analyze it, weigh it against Scripture and “work out your own Salvation with fear and trembling”? Do you have a relationship with God yourself or is it dependent on someone else’s?

I truly hope to see the day when Christians think for themselves. Maybe I’ll get to hear a pig sing yet.