The Trump Bible and… “the most wonderful thing”

I was sitting on my porch last evening when I saw that the former president had released a Bible.  He was selling it online and from the look of things, this sales initiative was creating quite a stir.

I sat with it.

I searched my inner conversation and I found some old feelings surface.  They were not good feelings, but they were feelings I recognized.  Recognized from long ago.

It was the Spring of 1991.  I was a student at Oregon State University.  I was at the peak of my religious fervor.  There was a madness in me… a passion for my faith that has rarely been felt since.  At that stage of my life, I would “share the gospel” with anything that moved.  In fact, I had a personal principle, a rule even, that I would not allow ANY conversation to last more than 10 minutes before I asked someone if they knew Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior.  They were the glorious days of faith-filled youth.

My passion for the things of God were so great, that I had secretly nominated myself the Defender of the Faith.  Now, my conscious self did not know about this nomination, but looking back, it was there, deep inside.  Also, “the faith” was a very young faith… a very narrow, zealous faith.  The small size of my faith was exposed by my belief that God needed to be defended.

(Bear with me, I will get back to the Trump Bible soon.)

On this particularly lovely Spring afternoon in Corvallis, Oregon, I was walking across the quad in front of the Memorial Union.  The lawns were full of small groups of sunning college students, whiling away the hours in the sunlight.  That is when I saw HIM.

Truth be told, I heard HIM before I saw him.  He was disheveled, wearing a canvas robe of some sort.  He held a ten-foot-tall cross of rough wood beams, so tall it competed with the sky.

And he was SCREAMING.

His words filled the quad and echoed off the surround of brick buildings.  His shouts were caustic… abusive… and full of god-talk.  He called the women “whores” and the young men “debaucherous.”  Every sentence ended with “You are going to hell” as the saliva hung on his lower lip and leapt out over the crowd with every accusation.

The Defender of the Faith welled up inside of me.  I spontaneously schemed of the ways I would bring HIM down.  Inside I prepared scathing rebukes, counterpoints of God’s love and forgiveness, all supported by possibly misquoted Bible passages.  My heart felt rage.

I began to circle the man.  First at a distance, stepping around my fellow-students, I moved closer to HIM with each rotation.

Then I heard, “Hey, Tony.”

I looked down and I had all but stumbled over Charisa. 

Charisa was a member of my Christian fellowship on campus.  Her big eyes and long lashes blinked at me in the sunlight. 

Once I calmed myself down I said, “Can you believe this guy.  Someone ought to give him a piece of their mind.”  My fists balled up.  “He is ruining everything.  This has got to stop!  I am gonna…”

To which Charisa said,

“Oh, I think this is the most wonderful thing.”

“What?!”  She might as well have hit me with brick.  “What are you talking about?”

To which Charisa responded.  “Thanks to all of this, I have had the most beautiful day. This man is causing everyone here to talk about religion and God and eternity.  I have spent the entire afternoon moving from group to group all around the quad and asking everyone what they think.”

(Inside the Defender started to back down, but I still wondered if Charisa was missing my point.)

“I ask them what they think and then I listen to them.  There are so many feelings about faith and heaven here that no one ever talks about.  Several times, after I listen, these people ask me what I think and then I get to tell them how beautiful and accepting God has been to me.  I get to tell them about how thankful I am for God.”

“And then you rebuke HIM and explain why he is wrong?”

“Not really,” she responded, “I don’t really worry about his answers.  He is seeding the questions that lead to great conversations.  I don’t get distracted by the show.  There are more important things to talk about.”

I never told Charisa, but I think she changed my life that day.

So, back to the Trump Bible.

Odds are, you have an opinion about it.  And odds are that when the topic of the Trump Bible (Actually, I think it is called the “God Bless the USA Bible”) comes up, there is a real temptation to be the Defender of one ideology or another.

I think if Charisa was in those conversations, she would just ask what the other person thinks about it?

She would ask them what they think about the Bible and the God it talks about.

She would ask them to share their hopes and hurts.

And if they asked back, Charisa would tell them how beautiful the Bible has been in her life and how thankful to God she is for it.

It seems most every day, the Creator God, the Eternal Spirit seeds questions about religion, God and eternity from the most unlikely sources.

Sometimes I take the bait and turn it into a debate.

I imagine Charisa would instead partner with God and allow the conversation to transcend.