This email arrived in my box at school this morning:

I wonder what would happen if we treated our Bible like we treat our cell phone?

• What if we carried it around in our purses or pockets?
• What if we flipped through it several times a day?
• What if we turned back to go get it if we forgot it?
• What if we used it to receive messages from the text?
• What if we treated it like we couldn’t live without it?
• What if we gave it to Kids as gifts?
• What if we used it when we traveled?
• What if we used it in case of emergency?
• This is something to make you go …hmm….where is my Bible?

Oh , and one more thing. Unlike our cell phone, we don’t have to worry about our Bible being disconnected because Jesus already paid the bill.

Makes you stop and think “where are my priorities?

And no dropped calls!

I don’t know why this kind of thing gets on my nerves, because it’s perfectly sincere in its insecure way. But it does. If I had to be specific, I guess I’d have to say it’s the implied martyrdom that so many of our more conservative Christian friends like to assume. They’re really more comfortable believing they’re in the minority and are persecuted like Paul or Stephen. Lacking convenient ways to be crucified upside down or to be stoned by the community, they pretend someone is throwing rocks at them anyway.

Anyway, I couldn’t resist. I wrote, but did not send out to the whole school like the other person, “What if we treated our cell phones like Bibles?”

• What if we thought that people who didn’t have cell phones were going to burn in hell?
• What if we killed people over which cell phone company was the best one?
• What if most people thought that those new-fangled cell phones that took pictures and did email weren’t “the real cell phone”?
• What if we decided that we should live our lives only after checking for messages on the cell phone?
• What if we all heard different messages when we checked?
• What if we called those who acted on those different messages “godless” or “neanderthals” or any other derogatory term?
• What if we wanted to make everyone else turn off their cell phones and use only ours?

That’s all I’ve got so far. Any suggestions?

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, beeyotches.