Monsters of the Bible

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  

A few years ago, my niece and a friend of hers were walking down a country mountain road on Halloween night.  

Five houses, all sporting jack o lanterns on their porches, were spread within walking distance from my home.  

After harvesting some candy from our neighborhood, my niece would be driven down into the valley where her grandparents lived. There the houses were more plentiful and not so distant from each other.  

This was a mountain in Tennessee where every kid, except for the Carrie Whites among us, celebrated Halloween.  

One of the locals who had been driving down the main mountain road toward the valley felt inspired by her god to turn onto our gravel road so she could tell my niece and her friend that they were going to hell for celebrating Halloween.  

It was an episode straight out of To Kill a Mockingbird where Miss Maudie had to face down with Bible verses of light and joy those fuming, disapproving fundamentalists flaunting Bible verses of gloom and doom. 

The interloper in our neighborhood did not get the reaction she had hoped.  My niece is very mouthy, and she told the lady to mind her own business.  But when my niece came back to my house, she was perturbed by the encounter.  

She was afraid.  I guess you could say the interloper did score some terror points that night.

The truth is that the woman who encountered my niece was one loony act away from being a monster.  She took the time to curse my niece with her imaginary eternal concentration camp.  

In sicker minds, that sort of piety inspires evil deeds like strapping dynamite to the body and blowing up a restaurant, or randomly shooting people, or burning imagined witches at the stake, or accusing a race of people of atrocities individuals among them never commit in order to justify genocide.  

I just saw the new Carrie.  I really liked it and would urge anyone who loves horror movies to view it.  What fascinated me was the nuanced way that Carrie and her mother were depicted that was not in the original film.  

Carrie White battles her mother with Bible verses of her own choosing to fend off her mother's Bible verse attack.  Margaret White, her mother, is clearly a disturbed woman in need of psychiatric care.  The Bible verses she prefers are in keeping with her pathology.

Yesterday, I wrote of Reverend Caldwell’s sermon that preached prayer affects the way we live.  Is it not also true that we choose the Bible verses that reflect and shape who we are?  Some choose Bible verses that curse and condemn.  Some choose verses that bless.  Some choose Bible verses that inspire murder and terrorism.  Some choose verses that heal.

The Bible verses we love shape who we are, and we shape the Bible in accordance with who we are.

These despisers are potential Monsters of the Bible.  They are not imaginary.  They live among us.  They need healing.  They must be sheltered within a greater and increasing number of us who love those Bible verses that reveal our God of love.  

Blessings…