What You Get is What You Got

I recently had a conversation with my parents and our family friends about a video created by a man named Rob Bell.  The video is basically Bell delivering a powerful talk while illustrating it on a large marker board.  Through the talk he touches on varying subjects but comes back around to how the universe is built on spirituality.  He speaks about how there is no “spiritual life” and “real life” there is just life. 

During this talk he speaks on how sometimes the answers to some of the hardest questions are never clear cut, such topics as Creationism vs. Science, Humans Rights, etc.  Bell explains this by comparing it to three dimensional objects vs. two dimensional objects.  “A square is not a circle” says Bell, “And a circle will never be a square.”  But when one examines a cylinder from a two dimensional standpoint one first sees a square and then sees the cylinder turn and one eventually sees a circle.

While I was watching this video, with my parents, I understood this to mean that maybe the answer to Creationism vs. Science is that God can create anything God wishes; maybe God did it through evolution.  Well Bell concluded the video by saying that people who want to be a certain way can see whatever they wish.  If one wishes to be skeptical, there is plenty to be skeptical about.  If one whishes to be hopeful, there is plenty to be hopeful about. 

The reason I am writing this is because recently my parents and I were having a conversation with family friends of ours about various religious topics, our friends being Baptist were happy to oblige.  The conversation leaked on towards the topic of Creationism vs. Science.  “There is just no way that any of that bologna could be true!”  Says our friends, referring to the scientific end, “to me it’s just obvious that what the Bible tells us is true, no matter what they say.”  “YES!”  Exclaims my father, “and that’s exactly what this video is about,” pointing at Bell’s video.  My jaw dropped and I couldn’t say anything.  Then it came to me, “What you get is what you got.”  Whatever my parents wanted to hear from that video is what they got.

Some people have created their own reality.  It doesn’t what goes on around them they are going to see everything through their Billy Graham colored glasses.  But maybe it does matter what goes on around them.  It only means we have to do something extreme to get their attention.  Like get in the way of their normal lives like sitting in the streets congesting traffic, chaining ourselves in front of buildings, marching, rallying!  And they ask why we have to be so loud about it…