Religious Tomfoolery and Holy Bitterness

Yesterday, my friend Wes almost choked on his waffle laughing during our breakfast at Dave’s Diner.

We’d been talking about how, over time, organizations move away from the original vision of their founder. This is true of both secular and religious organizations.

Wes complained that I have a cynical outlook on organized religion (as though he doesn’t). So I remarked that perhaps I should write a commentary on the Bible.

That’s when Wes choked.

He got to laughing so hard at the idea of my writing a biblical commentary that the waitress ran over to see if he was ok.

The thought of that frail little girl trying to do a Heimlich on a 300+ pound man send me into spasms of laughter too.

When he recovered from his mirth attack, I began worrying the idea of writing a commentary or theology book..

“The main problem is,” I said, “That all the good titles have been taken already”.

This set us to laughing again as we imagined titles for my magnum opus, which would be either a Bible Commentary or a book of systematic theology.

Back in medieval times, Thomas Aquinas snagged the title Summa Theologica for his set of books (which run five thick volumes in the concise edition). My Latin is a bit rusty but I think his title means All There Is To Know About Theology: The Study Of God.

Wes suggested I could call my commentary Some Theology – Sort Of.

There are already books of comprehensive theology on the market; perhaps a good title for my book would be Incomprehensible Theology.

In the early 1500s, John Calvin wrote his theology down in his massive tomes, Institutes Of The Christian Religion. With weight training I might be able to lift his book.

Since that title is taken, Wes suggested my book could be called Christianity For The Institutionalized.

This set us off laughing again.

Customers at other tables stared.

Dave’s is a tolerant place; they have not put us out yet.

We came back to my house to smoke our pipes and talk. I have resumed work editing the diary of Samuel Ward, a translator of the King James Bible. Wes helped me translate some Greek phrases from the Ward Dairy. Wes is fluent in Greek, Hebrew, and Latin and he has a smattering of Arabic also. He’s a registered member of some sort of International Society of Really Really Smart People.

I’d been trying to solve the linguistic problems in the Ward diary myself in spite of the fact that I hardly recognize the Greek alphabet.

Immediately Wes identified my problem: Samuel Ward sometimes used koine Greek in his quotes; other times, he used classical Greek.

I should have noticed that.

HA!

(I had only the vaguest idea that there was a difference).

Ward, a royal chaplain and one of the translators of the King James Bible, sprinkled Greek phrases throughout his diary because, to him, these phrases made things clearer. He even made jokes in Greek and expected his readers to laugh at the punch line.

For instance, he speaks of some Christians as “speaking fire, but living water”.

And he frets over preachers who feed their people, “ηδυσματι και ουκ εδεσμασι”..

In English letters that’s “hêdusmati kai ouk edesmasi”

See the pun?

It means they feed the people, “sprigs of garden mint instead of steaks of roasted meat”.

Isn’t that a hoot?

If Samuel Ward had been with us at Dave’s for breakfast, the three of us would definitely been evicted for rowdiness.

As Wes and I worked on Greek phrases, we realized that we were engaging in petty sin.

Wes, scheduled to work a late shift today, remarked that when coworkers asked him how he’d spent his time off, he’d say, “Oh, I spent the morning translating some Greek phrases for my friend John”.

“That will really impress them,” he said, “I’ll get to feel so big. Smarter than I really am”.

I admitted that it would be possible for me to edit the Ward diary without using a single phrase of Greek. I’m handling the text this way because I also want to feel big,
To impress readers,
To come across as an intellectual,
To feel superior, |
Smug,
Erudite.
Snotty.

How petty and how pathetic.

Even faith, even witnessing, even sincere religion can provide a corrupt man with an occasion for sin. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?”

In one place Samuel Ward cautioned his readers against ιεραπίκρα, Hierapicra, holy bitterness.

He observes that in some of us religion works like a clock with a broken main spring. That on the face of things, the dial shows the time, but it’s stuck. Twice a day, it reads the correct time, but it never moves on.

Ward says this state produces “holy bitterness”, a devotion more to religious trivia than to God. An inclination to controversy over tantalizing theological minutiae.

For instance, such folks may feel great concern about how the world began (and those wicked evolutionists) or great interest in the Last Days (Battle of Armageddon) — Things we can do nothing about — but little interest in expressing a living faith here and now in the present day.

Involvement in such theological controversies tends to sour people and make us bitter, dower, harsh, stern, foreboding and forbidding.

What a sad state.

But that’s what the world sees.

The joy of the Lord turned rancid.

But, who am I to judge another’s servant.

I do not enjoy the company of Christians who are inclined to holy bitterness but it is far better for me to tend my own soul than to evaluate another person’s.

I may judge what I see as that guy’s religion when all I am really seeing is the state of his ulcer or his liver or his migraine or his marriage.

Before I write off that gaunt old woman’s lack of joy as the product of defective faith… If I’d been caring for an invalid child hand and foot for 35 years, maybe I would not be a religious butterfly either.

Yes, Samuel Ward, who was known 500 years ago as a Puritan, a people not known for their flightiness, has a lot to say to John Cowart to day.

He should be editing me, not me him.

And he would not need a word of Greek to do it.

After Wes left, an old lady down the street asked me to fix a flat tire for her... Laughing, thinking, praying, working, studying God's Word, fixing a flat tire for an invalid -- it's all part of the same thing.

Thanks be to God.