Whoda thunkit? It turns out that one puzzling and disturbing episode in a board game revealed a church’s fundamental paradigm flaw—one that it took me years to figure out!
Here’s the story:
Having recently joined a new church in the mid 1980s, I attended a Friday night college devotional, along with about 80 other members. I had been excited to join as the church promised to be different from others, to be genuinely intent on being actual followers of Jesus, rather than just churchgoers, etc. So here I was in one of my first meetings with their campus ministry.
The entertainment that night was to play the board game “Bible Trivia”, which in this case, was played by splitting the massive group into two teams and alternating turns by reading a Bible question from a card for a representative of each team. It was my team’s turn to read a question to the other, and it was my new friend Tina’s turn to answer for that team.
The question was: “What is the first city named in the Bible?”
Tina’s answer? “Uh, Canaan?”
And, according to the trivia card, she was right. Her team cheered at the announcement of the same.
Now here’s where it gets a little freaky, because, of all the questions that could have been asked, luck would have it that it would be this question—one about which I had just happened to memorize a tidbit of information—the sort of thing that is truly “trivia”, and yet which can stick in the brain almost indelibly. In fact, to this day, these many years later, I still remember quite vividly the reason that I was compelled to object to the trivia game’s ruling on the question. My interjection was something like what follows:
“Wait a minute, ” I protested to the card reader, “That answer is not correct.”
As I recall, this seemed to have a bit of a hushing effect on the crowd, so I continued with something like this:
“Genesis 4:17 says that Cain built a city and named it after his son, Enoch. The word Canaan, on the other hand, doesn’t appear until much later in Genesis.”
Now how’s that for a coincidence—that I would have that particular tidbit memorized? But there it was, appearing in my brain as if some teleprompter had put it there!
Naturally, this citation from Genesis would put an end to the matter, and the game’s official answer would be disregarded, with the whole crowd recognizing the game’s error and conceding that Tina’s point should be removed from the scoreboard.
This situation, however, was far from “natural”!
Instead, my objection was generally shunned with murmuring, the loudest instances of which were statements like “Oh, just give it to her!” and “That’s legalistic.”
These were the sentiments that prevailed, to my great puzzlement and consternation.
Why were we playing such a game at all if not for appreciation of the Bible? So when the Bible contradicts the game, why does the game prevail?
And there were at least 80 Bibles in that room, yet it occurred to none who would vocalize the idea that perhaps someone should turn to Genesis 4:17 to find out if what Jack was saying was true.
Just days before had I been instructed by this same church that all believers should emulate the behavior of the Bereans, of which it was written:
Acts 17:11 Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
Why, then, was nobody wanting to see if what I had said was true?
I am no Paul, to be sure, yet the claim I was making was about what the Bible says, and nobody cared to check it out.
All these years later, I can now see that this was no mere and random episode, but that it was a particularly poignant glimpse “behind the wizard’s curtain”, such as the glimpse afforded when Toto pulled back the drapery surrounding the “wizard’s” control booth in the Wizard of Oz. Unlike the movie, I didn’t see magnificent events being manipulated by a mere mortal, but what I did see was people being manipulated by an ugly and counterproductive paradigm.
For all their boasting, it turns out they didn’t really care about the truth of a matter at all; instead, they cared about belonging to something. They were proud not to be members of “that church over there”, but were not interested in exploring whether their own views were in need of yet further improvement. They were not interested in “sharpening the saw”, nor in excellence, nor in accuracy, nor in intellectual honesty. They were quite willing to cheat the truth in order to “win” some fabricated “victory”, whether it be a trivia game, an inflation of their membership numbers, of the protection of unscrupulous members of their paid ministry staff.
These are the things I have come to see these many years later. And had I then held the perspective I hold now, I would have known that it was time to walk out of that church, never to return. But I didn’t understand these things so clearly back then; I was just a beginner when it comes to searching for and acknowledging the truth. It would take me about 17 years to figure out it was time to leave that church.
It’s only in looking back now, after having wasted so many years of my life in devotion to that church that would never (and could never) keep its promises, that I realize what I should have realized that night. I had seen enough to make a solid judgment; I just didn’t know I had.
It turns out that no movement that is built upon hypocrisy can flourish. I see that now, so today, I would walk out—even over such a “petty” thing as bad behavior in a friendly game of Bible Trivia. And why? Is it because I’m turning into a crochety old man? No, it’s because I’m learning to recognize a colossal waste of time when I see it.
Surely, someone will argue that any such judgment would be hasty, as these fellow college students were themselves (likely) recent members who had not yet had time to mature. My disagreement comes in this, however: Had they truly been “converted” to a godly way of thinking, it should have happened at their “conversions”—that is, when they were allowed to join the church. Having been thus converted, they should have readily seen the principles and issues involved with this error in the trivia game. After all, what’s being judged here is not their unwillingness to listen to Jack, but their unwillingness to consult the Bible when challenged as to a clear point of fact.
But I would remain another 17 years in that church, sometimes pointing out other facts that would go similarly ignored, and sometimes joining in the ignoring of such matters myself! (Remember, I said I was just a beginner then.)
Those sad folks (myself included), thought that they were part of something really special. They thought they were the “one true church” and that they were “the only ones doing it (right)”. The fact of the matter, however, is that their presence in that fellowship hall that night stemmed primarily from the fact that the church was on a constant recruiting mission. Not a converting, mission, mind you, but a recruiting mission. Their minds had not been converted to a new paradigm. Their consciences had not been converted to new habits. Their critical thinking skills had not been awakened and applied to all matters religious. No, they had simply been recruited to the lowest possible standard of “membership” that the church leaders deemed to fit the balance between not getting any new recruits and not making the church exclusive enough that it would be perceived as a difficult thing to get in.
These things I see now; oh that I had seen them then! I would like to have those 17 years back, indeed!
But at the end of it all, I can say that I did, at least, manage to learn some lessons that many others may never learn. Only after all that ordeal are plain things finally plain to me. And the one paradigm missing from this game night?
Truth should trump everything else, no matter the occasion.
Jack
