Trying to Stay Focused on One Line of Reasoning or Getting Distracted and Going Completely Different Directions Because You Forgot what Your original

Point Was Or Something Like That


I had thought about flushing out some of Boykin’s thinking in setting the p-word as the antithesis of love. And then in turn I had thought about asking myself how that all relates to the two great commandments (love God—love neighbor) and then how those two relate to each other.

But then I got distracted. Saturday’s Minneapolis StarTribune, in its Faith and Values section, had an interesting article about a local author’s connection to last month’s (I think it was then) electrocution of the Texas pastor. Being Baptist, this pastor had stepped into a large tank of water on the podium to baptize a congregant. When he reached for the cordless microphone something went terribly wrong and he died shortly thereafter.

I had heard a brief description of this event, but the article did a good job filling in some of the details surrounding that fateful day. The theme for the day (and subsequent month) at this church was based on Terry Esau’s book “Surprise Me.” The church was to start a 30-day faith experiment. Each day they were to ask God for a surprise and then log (or maybe even blog, although it doesn’t say that in the article and this is merely my editorial comment perhaps as a way to relieve tension when discussing a very somber event as some are apt to do when they face issues of ultimate importance and aren’t quite sure how to deal with them or even if they want to deal with them so then they change the topic or try to make a joke out of it even though they mean no disrespect) their experience.

Of course no one foresaw the tragedy of that morning, but the very theme of the day begs the question of God’s involvement. And this question is actually the main focus of Boykin’s book “The Gospel of Coincidence,” which raised that initial question of love’s opposite. This book, now out-of-print and commanding some decent prices on e-bay (like $ 50, I should have invested in copies of this book instead of Enron), does a great job of posing some intriguing and ancient questions and an even greater job of alienating most of his “friends” with his answers. (I’m still surprised that Zondervan would publish it.)

His argument in a nutshell (although I know this is an oversimplification) is that God works primarily through people’s hearts and minds without undue coercion and not by micromanaging every detail of the universe. Most “happenings” of this world are the results of free people acting to cause them. Taking people’s free will out of the equation or focusing too much on a divine preference for everything is tantamount to reading tea leaves. Taken to its extreme (where people spend too much time and energy trying to discern God’s will for everything, e.g. a preferred parking spot for them) ultimately leads one to inaction in the “things that really matter” and things that are clear to us.

I haven’t come to any firm decisions on the arguments he presents, but I did have fun reading the book and I think he provides a healthy balance to those who venture too close to a deterministic view of the world. And since people have argued this issue from the beginning of time, and I’m sure not going to come up with any original insights, it’s probably time to quit typing and do something productive, like reading (at least I didn’t say TV.)