Seat everyone you can, Mr. Sheriff, and those that can’t get seats, let them stand around the wall

When therefore He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. John 2:22

We all have these moments, lightening bolts from the sky, when it is clear.  That yes, indeed, the Scripture is truly the Word of God, living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Marco had yet another vaguely humbling moment in class again.  The professor stood in front of his collection of world leaders-to-be at the world’s leading graduate school devoted to the study of international affairs, economics, diplomacy and policy research.  Does anyone here know the Ten Commandments?

Silence.  

More silence.  

Marco looked around.  No one had anything to say.  So he began, “Thou shalt have no gods before me...”

And as it turns out the guy was looking for something a little more theoretical, perhaps Blanchard and Cottarelli’s Ten Commandments for Fiscal Adjustment in Advanced Economics, or simply put what advanced countries need in clarity of intent, appropriate calibration of fiscal targets, and adequate structural reforms. Or the Croson and Gächter’s Science of Experimental Economics ―anomalies in individual decision making and the body of evidence from experiments on bargaining, public goods, coordination, markets, auctions and individual decision making has grown.  Or whatever.

Mike Begley preached last Sunday.  And I gotta appreciate the pell mell nature of his Navigator Scripture memorization.  Sometimes it is one more veer off the logic path, but it’s so good.  The lilt in his voice, “and what about this one” as he rattles off yet another passage.  

I gotta appreciate my fundamentalist childhood as well.  Sometimes it is true that I trip over preconceptions or misconceptions or sadly incoherent conceptions and where did that ever come from, but there is also a foundation of Read Through the Bible in a Year little folding bits of paper that shaped my morning routine year upon year.  And I so believe that it produces its harvest even now, sown deeply into well-tilled soil. 

And as I believe with my heart and soul and mind, I must remember what is true.  An’ if them fancy-fine gentlemen (to quote sweet Mayella Ewell) cling to a self-imposed abstractions rather than the moral truth which binds together reality, I myself have no excuse.

I made some promises, a long time ago, standing in the front of Morgantown Baptist Church, on the outskirts of Dayton, Tennessee, just a stone’s toss from the very courthouse where William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow argued over the veracity of modern science and human knowledge as pitted against the Scriptures as interpreted and enforced by state legislators:I pledge allegiance to the Bible, God’s Holy Word.  I will make it a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto My path, and will hide its words in my heart that I might not sin against God.

And I know that I prayerfully remind God of His promise, as I wander through my daily prayer list, “So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, Without accomplishing what I desire, And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.

So be it.