**Note: my father is writing/has written (?) a book by the same name, so I think it's important to point out I am borrowing his title and the views expressed are solely my own...though it is the nature of fathers to heavily influence the views of their sons, and therefore my views are probably his fault. :) **
When my siblings and I were kids, my father used to tell us that grades were the least important indicator of knowledge.
The best way to judge how much someone knows, he'd say, is to listen to the questions they ask.
I think we all took this as a personal challenge to ask as many questions as possible...one of the first ones being: "Does this mean our parents don't care if we get bad grades?" That question, it turns out, is a good indicator that you don't know shit.
I personally made "questioning" my mode of choice, particularly when it applied to authority. And, I quickly learned that nowhere was there more authority worth questioning than in the Church. It's important to point out that I have always been, and will always be of Christian faith. I have a home church. I believe in Jesus the Christ and God in Heaven. More importantly, I believe in the principles of acceptance, forgiveness and redemption that are at the core of my faith. But it is a far cry from professing that faith, to defending the wholesale ignorance of most people who go to Church. Ignorance, mind you, not stupidity. Ignorance demonstrated not by them getting a failing grade in their Jesus Test, but in their steadfast insistence on checking their real questions at the door.
That's right, I said "real questions". That's because most churches (Protestant ones, anyway) I've been associated with will tell you they want you to ask questions. But what I learned early on was that there was a list of "acceptable" questions, the ones the Church felt they had a good response to. And then there were the tough ones, the ones I started asking silently in Sunday school. The ones that went something like this:
Does anyone else think that Samson guy was a total dick? And why do we think it's awesome that he killed all those unsuspecting diners?
Why are the disciples the stupidest people in the Bible? And what does that say about the fact we call ourselves "disciples"?
Why doesn't anyone read the parts of the Psalms where David dashes the baby brains on the rocks?
Am I the only one who things the statement, "I only slept with my daughter because I was trashed and she came on to me" should disqualify you as a Biblical hero?
And, just for good measure, I'll throw in one to get my dad a little worked up:
Was there anyone in the Bible MORE arrogant than Paul? I mean who says, "we are all sinners...but I'm pretty sure I was the BIGGEST sinner. Like, if we're judging based on sin, then I was the BEST sinner...EVER"?
They may sound trite, but these are not silly questions. These are questions that everyone who hasn't taken the "shepherd and sheep" analogy to mean that we should literally act like sheep, should be asking. And, I would venture to say, questions like these would probably lead us around to discussing things that might get us a little closer to the truth of the matter: We need to get a little more comfortable with not knowing what the hell we're talking about. We claim a God who is bigger than us. Smarter than us. Beyond us. That means God is more than the bite sized pieces that even the smartest among us (I'm talking to you, Paul!) can absorb, much less regurgitate in a doctrinal thesis or spew on a family values talk radio show. And guess what? I like that about God. It means some of the questions I can't answer, I don't have to. That's why God is God, and I'm just me.
I've been dealing with one of those questions for a week now. As you may know, we have some plum trees next to our back porch. Over the past couple years, one of them has given exactly one fruit per season. So, this year, in an effort to encourage cross pollination, I put bird feeders in each of them. The thought was, if I could get birds to fly back and forth between the trees while they were flowering, I might see a little more fruit. Basically, I gave God a shot for a couple years, but this year we're gonna try it my way. Typical of me, by the way. The results of my meddling are yet to be proven, but one thing is already abundantly clear:
There's nothing like a banquet buffet to bring out the riff raff.
Don't laugh. This is a Biblical concept. But before I get to that, let me tell you what I'm talking about. You see, the birds LOVE the feeders. I took this picture this morning after having filled this feeder to the top yesterday morning...we got us some birds eating out of that thing! In fact, since I put them up, it's like I have a birdie Vegas buffet right outside the sliding glass doors. I truly didn't know some of the birds we're seeing lived in our neighborhood: Blue jays, robins, flycatchers. I like to think of them as the chic tourists, the Hollywood day trippers, the European faux-hawk crowd. And, of course, we also have the midwestern crowd, the out-sized mourning doves that literally sit beneath the feeders all day long stuffing their faces. I can almost hear them saying, We made the trip, now we're gonna get our money's worth. I don't mind any of them. I love watching them. After all, that's who the feeders are for.
Then there's the riff raff. Squirrels, refusing to acknowledge I have purchased the "squirrel proof" feeders, make daily attempts to make me feel like I wasted my money by not having gotten the pretty ones. Full disclosure: I don't really mind squirrels, either. They're greedy little bastards, but there's something endearing about them. Okay fine, they can eat, too, as long as they don't keep pulling the lids off and pulling seed out from the top.
But they aren't the only riff-raff. The other day, just as I let one of my dogs out, a hawk flashed into one of the plum trees about 10 feet from me. Now, I love hawks. They are my favorite bird, and I have a large tattoo of one on my back. But, I don't want one as a pet. And having one death dive into a tree and land 4 feet above my dog's head is a completely different story. Thankfully, realizing last minute that the dog below was of the 70 pound variety, it flew off to sit on a nearby telephone wire for a few minutes. It was breathtaking in not an entirely bad way, and I like to think it was there for the squirrels and not lying in wait for Einstein, my 7 pound toy poodle. Regardless, this banquet of mine was attracting predators.
It was the tree rats that put me over the edge. Everything else has some kind of redeeming quality. Beauty. Predatory grace. Just plain cute. But when you walk out just after dark, see several rats running through your trees and hear them clambering over the porch awning, something happens inside. It's that oh, HELL no! moment when you say I'll be damned if I'm going to feed a family of freakin' rats! So, over the past week, I've been putting out poison for them every night. In case you're wondering, poisoning rats works just like poisoning people at a buffet: you put out something that looks nothing like food, but apparently tastes damn good, and they ingest mass quantities of it before going back to lay in their room in agony, wishing for death.
I did it without remorse, even watching to make sure they were coming to eat it. I did it with complete discrimination, as well. I put it out at night, when I was sure the squirrels were gone and after my dogs had been out for the last time. And, I brought any leftovers back in at the beginning of the next day so the rest of the wildlife wouldn't accidentally eat it. I didn't want to hurt anything else. I only wanted the rats gone. They ate ridiculous amounts of the stuff, and every night I had to deal with seeing them swarming through the trees, all the while wishing them dead. Then, on Thursday, they were gone. We didn't see them that night and, the next day, the poison was still there. Mission accomplished.
Perhaps it's because it's Easter. Maybe it's because my "honey-do" list today includes getting up on my roof and in the attic to find out if the rats decided to die on my property. I don't know. What I do know is this whole thing has me feeling pensive. I have questions I can't answer...that probably no one can answer.
You see, the Bible recounts one of Jesus' parables, where a king sets out a marriage feast and invites all the best people to come. For whatever reason, the cool kids think it's a big joke and decide not to show. So the king says to his servants, "Hey I've got a feast here. Find me someone to eat it." And the servants go and grab every Tom, Dick and Sally from the streets and fill the hall and have a much better party than they probably would have if the original folks had showed up. The way this story has been explained to me, is that God is the king opening his banquet to all the riff-raff through forgiveness. But something isn't quite right for me. Never mind that the king kicks one of them out for not being dressed properly, what bothers me about this story is the tough question behind it that no one asks:
What if the first people the king invited had showed up? Would that mean the others would have been persona non grata?
I look at my bird feeders and I desperately hope God is more forgiving than me. Because all my preferred guests showed up...so I made it difficult for everyone else. I bought feeders that made it harder for squirrels to share the bounty. I kept a suspicious eye on the hawk from afar, ready to rush out and scare it away if it got too close again. And I poisoned the rats.
Heck, while I'm at it, I hope God is more forgiving than the Church. We talk a big game about having an open table, but we act like all the preferred guests are already sitting at their seats, and we treat the riff raff like pests. Predators. Rats.
For good measure, I pray God is bigger than the Bible, too. I pray God had a plan for feeding everyone who was hungry, whether the A-List showed up or not. I pray that the Word of God, the one that leaves me with so many concerns, isn't the only word God has. I have too many questions left unanswered and I have a feeling I'm not the only rat tired of eating poison.
