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Please pass those two fish, again!

It wasn't in a previous lifetime, because I haven't had any of those, but it seems a long time ago, nonetheless, that I studied and graduated from a theological seminary.  (I had been nudged, ever-so-persistently in that direction, and I did not understand myself very well.)

 I recall the time when I discovered that one of the other students wanted to become a missionary to a foreign country:  somewhere like Ghana, or Uzbekistan, or South Carolina.  "Why?", some of us asked, curious.  His answer was plain:  he thought it was easier for people in less-developed cultures to believe what the Bible had to tell.  It was easier for them to believe that water could be changed into wine, or for people to rise from the dead, or to believe that heaven was overhead and hell underfoot, than it was for people like us.  

 Pat Robertson agrees with him, as it turns out.  Mr. Robertson, as you know, has wanted to become President of the United States, and thinks that prayer can stop hurricanes and cure mange.  Something like that.  He was asked why miracles --things like people being raised from the dead, blind people seeing again, and the lame walking--seem to happen overseas, but not here in the good, old U.S. of A.  The Reverend Mr. Robertson said he thought the teaching of evolution might be to blame:

 "Those people [overseas] didn't go to Ivy League schools.  We're so sophisticated.  We think we'be got everything figured out.  We know about all those things that says God isn't real."  

 Overseas, he went on to explain, people are so humble and simple. "You tell them God loves them, and they say, 'OK, he loves me.'  You say, 'God'll do miracles', and they say, 'OK, we believe him.'  That's what God's looking for!"

 Well, let us be honest:  a little education does seem to get in the way of walking on water.  You can't take a couple of herring to a picnic and feed five thousand people in Cambridge or New Haven:  it is much easier in primitive cultures, such as Nigeria or Bob Jones University.  

 It isn't too difficult to explain.  If you live in a culture in which you believe you are surrounded by both good and evil spirits, or in which the dead occasionally get up and walk around in the middle of the night, causing scary noises and the cows not to give milk, it isn't too difficult to talk about a slightly different worldview from Mesopotamia and Jerusalem a long time ago.  If you think praying to the gods on the mountain will make it rain, or if you have seen the dead walking across the river in a late-night fog, you might understand a little stroll on the Sea of Galilee.  

 And conversely, learning that the universe is almost 14 billion years old makes the creation of light about 6 thousand years ago a bit of a stretch.  It makes more sense, in Tulsa, to believe that your brother-in-law was behind the door when God passed the brains out, than to believe that your kids share his genes.  And that maybe earnest prayer will fix it.  

 Primitive world views often have a lot in common:  spirits, miracles and, of course, a complete ignorance of everything we have learned since then.  But, that is what happens when you start to think about things:  you make it hard for missionaries.

 Although, if Pat Robertson is right, God is looking for simple souls.  

 Try not to think about it too much.


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