Messin' with Scripture

A favorite comedian of mine, Jim Gaffigan, has a great stand-up skit about bacon, "the most beautiful food on earth." You can watch it here.

During my first year of residency, two of the four residents were vegetarians. And all year long I evangelized them, trying to convert them to my carnivore ways with a relentless onslaught of bacon jokes. Because, let's be honest, if any meat is going to convert a vegetarian, it's bacon.

A friend and I were reflecting the other day that bacon is so great that you can simply equate bacon with love. Bacon is love. So, we started choosing a few passages of the Bible and replacing the word love with the word bacon. Here's what we came up with.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not bacon, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal...Bacon is patient, bacon is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast it is not proud. Bacon is not rude or self-seeking, bacon is not easily angered and keeps no record or wrongs. Bacon does not delight in evil but delights in breakfast truth....Bacon never fails. (1 Baconthians 13:1, 4-7 sort of).

I know bacon doesn't mix in with the Bible all that well, because of all the kosher Jewish dietary restrictions. But I wouldn't be surprised if Jesus ate bacon. He was always breaking the nonsense rules anyway: working on the sabbath, healing on the sabbath, why not enjoy God's gift to the food community. I think when Jesus told his disciples to love one another just as he as loved them, he was really telling them to give bacon to one another just as he had given them bacon. Because, let's be honest, love is bacon!

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Another little moment of fiddling with the Bible that I came across was while reading a book recently. There's this group of verses in John 14 that many Christians too often abuse and turn into a weapon. This is regrettable. Here is the actual passage:

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.  You know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Below is, I think, how many Christians actually interpret these verses. Brace yourself.

"You should be very troubled, because if you believe in God, but not me, you will be shut out of my Father's house in heaven, where there are a few small rooms for the few who have correct belief...." Then Thomas said to him, "Lord, what about people of other religions or no religion at all? Will they go to heaven after they die?" Jesus said to him, "I am the only way to heaven, and confessing the truth about me is the only truth that will get you to life after death. None will go to haven unless they a) personally understand and believe a clearly defined message about me, b) personally and consciously ask me to come into their heart, c) disavow any other religious affiliation, and d) affiliate with the new religion I'm starting and naming after myself. None can get come to God unless they get by me first." (not John 14: 1-6)  -Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity

I must admit, I chuckled when I first read this...rendition(?) And, I think this is a beautiful passage (the original one), but it simply is not saying what most people think. Jesus did not speak this verse while having an existential or doctrinal discussion with the disciples about himself as the door keeper to heaven. If that's how you've always heard this verse, sorry to burst your bubble, but it needed to be popped. It is part of a much longer discussion which begins in the previous chapter. Jesus had just lambasted Peter for stepping out of place and the disciples were feeling a bit low. They were troubled, because he had spoken about leaving them. This verse falls in string of verse of Jesus comforting and consoling his closest friends.

That's how I've been messin' with the Bible. How have you been playing with scripture lately? How has scripture been toying with you?