A case study
Billy Bobsleigh did the math for the fourth time. It just had to be wrong, or could it be that he indeed messed up his otherwise simple calculations? But again, after the fourth time, he ended up with the same product. Conflicting thoughts flashed through his mind and Billy noticed that it even affected his body. His heart rate had gone up and his hands felt clammy. If his calculations were accurate it would have consequences for how he had read the Bible in the past and for his future reading of it. Despondency started to envelop him and move his inner life. If he would allow these thoughts and questions, his foundations, firmly established and construed by his church, selected authors and peers would be shaken up without having any clue where did would leave him, or take him. Thus, Billy decided to settle the inner dispute by holding on to the choice to maintain his faith journey the way he was taught: follow the heart and not reason.
Three years
later Billy realized he’d been unsuccessful in shaking off the conflict of the
mores of church propagated and encouraged simple faith on the one hand, and his
hunger for understanding and investigation on the other. On the contrary;
compared with three years earlier the babbling brook of questions had grown
into a storm in his mind and heart. Where can I go with my questions and
observations without being burned off or demonized, Billy wondered. My
pastor? That wasn’t self-evident since the pastor regularly propagated that
we, Christians, believe that the Bible is literally true, one day is always
one day and not a second longer, the earth cannot be older than about 7000
years and one doesn't qualify for heaven unless baptized.
The evening
didn’t proceed the way Billy had hoped but unfortunately as expected:
So we’re
talking about 600.000 men over twenty years of age, not mentioning the women and children,
plus a crowd of riffraff and large flocks and herds of livestock? Everyone checked their bibles and
nodded enthusiastically: Yes, that’s what it says.
And the whole bunch walked through the sea where God miraculously had provided a dry
path for them to cross, all in one night?
Again the
group checked the facts and nodded encouraging: Go Billy, go!
Is it
reasonable to assume that most of these men were married and had one or two
children? A bit of
thinking in the group since these assumptions were not literally written down
in the Bible. All of the group agreed that this was quite plausible and safe to
assume, albeit somewhat conservative.
So we’re
talking about, let’s say, at least 2 million people plus a whole lot of cattle.
If they would walk in groups of four in line and were keeping Corona prescribed distance from each other, how long a cue are we talking about?
One group
member, who worked in IT, took less than 5 seconds to cough up the answer: 750
kilometres (466 miles) and added that in reality, it must have been a much longer
cue because of the cattle and stuff.
And this whole group walked through the sea in one night?
This
instantaneously turned into a cacophony
of discussion, suggestions, and alternative readings, where the faces of some of
the group members had turned purple, but was cut short by the leader and partly
resolved by him when he proposed that we’re serving a God of miracles who in
His wisdom and power was able to perform the whole operation in one night. He
added, now with a pastoral and fatherly face and voice, that if we start
questioning these type of incidents we’re venturing into dangerous territory with
the authority of the Bible at stake. And nobody wants that he’d
rhetorically resumed, articulating the assumed common feelings of everyone in
the group.
In the
final “pray for each other” order of the evening, three group-members prayed
for Billy, asking God to keep Billy close to Himself and help Bill to maintain
his childlike faith.
Two years
later Billy left the church.
To be continued...
(Exodus 12-14)
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