More of The Tall Tale

This is the story of how it all started, of Heaven and Earth when they were created.
Genesis 2:4
The Message





“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth….”.

For folks who have real problems with the Tall Tale, it usually starts right here. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…” All the debaters, all the scholars, all the skeptics and cynics and naysayers, they all hear someone say this, and they just can’t accept it. It pushes their buttons. It offends their scientific sensibilities.

“You would have to be a total idiot to believe that some invisible God was sitting around in his big palace in the sky, and one day he was feeling lonely, and just decided he would make himself a planet with some people on it!”

I have to admit, it does sound kind of crazy. It sounds foolish to believe that some God up in the clouds…Well, wait a minute…I guess back then there weren’t even any clouds yet, so I’m not sure where he hung out. Anyway, it does sound crazy to think that a God we can’t see made everything, including us, according to his own specifications. Quite frankly, it just sounds impossible. But then again, sometimes you have to consider the alternatives. As difficult as it is for some folks to swallow “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…”, it’s at least as hard for me to grasp that sentence that begins “Billions and billions of years ago…”.
I’m no scientist, but I like to think I’m not the dumbest man in the world, so the alternative to “In the beginning, God created…” is difficult for me to believe. The alternative story usually goes something like this…

“Billions and billions of years ago (the scientific way of saying ‘In the beginning…’), there was a whole bunch of gases and space dust floating around. We’re not sure where it came from, so don’t ask…That’s beside the point. Anyway, all this space dust and these gases run into each other, and BOOM! There’s the earth. Not only was the earth made that way, but everything about it fell into place so perfectly that it was the absolutely ideal place for producing and evolving life.”

Yesterday, I was smoking a cigarette in the factory I own where I manufacture dynamite, kerosene, and matchsticks. Not a wise move on my part. The whole place blew up. When the smoke cleared, it was revealed that all the matchsticks had fallen into place so perfectly they formed an exact replica of Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello, complete with the three-hole basement privy where I’m quite sure he wrote the Declaration of Independence.

Something about the alternative story sounds just as impossible as the Tall Tale. Sometimes I just look at the alternative, and I can just as easily believe that the German government is breeding mind-controlled monkeys and teaching them to play Scrabble and eat my friend, Twig (a real dream I had after eating at a Chinese buffet late one night). I think the real problem I have with the alternative story is not that any geological evidence is contrary to the thought of a big bang, nor that the fossil record points us in a different direction than evolution. I think it’s just the idea that the whole universe was a cosmic accident; an intergalactic combo of sneezing and simultaneous passing of gas, if you will. Could it really have just been dumb luck, an embarrassing “oops” that has resulted in the amazing mess we live in today?

I believe the Tall Tale. Not because any Sunday School teacher or my Mama or any hell-fire preacher told me to. I believe it because I just can’t conceive a better explanation for things. But still, even what I believe with all my heart to be true sounds impossible.

I would never say that I know exactly how it all came to be. “In the beginning…” confuses me at times. Sometimes there seems to be an information deficit at the “In the beginning…” portion of the story. I believe in the Author of the Tall Tale, and I know that he knows how it all happened, and it appears to me that he wrote down about as much of that part of the story as he intended for any of us to know. I’ll never be fool enough to tell somebody that I have all the facts of “In the beginning…” figured out, and I know exactly how it happened. I think people who are convinced that they know all the details of “In the beginning…”, regardless of which side of the fence they stand on, are just kidding themselves, doing their best to make themselves believe they really have some knowledge that is deeply hidden from the rest of us all. Whether it was 6000 or 10,000 or 100 billion years ago, I just can’t say I know for sure. Then again, me believing in the Tall Tale and all, I can’t rightly say that the Author of the Tale intended for us to debate “In the beginning…” as much as we do. Just like the scientists and critical thinkers always say, “Don’t worry about where the space dust and gases came from…That’s not the point”, I believe that those of us who believe in the Tall Tale also have to focus on what’s really important…The whole story. The Author wrote all the facts about “In the beginning…” that we need to know. Those facts are an important part of the story, but they are not the whole story. Me being the deep and analytical thinker that I am (not), I think the real point of “In the beginning…” is that this whole production of asteroids and cosmic dust and earth and sky and light and gravitational pulls and frozen moons wasn’t just a chance occurrence. The real point is that “In the beginning…” was an action taken with forethought.

God is not a reactionary God. He is a God of forethought. He didn’t look down one day on Israel, and say, “Oh snap! Pharaoh has done made all my people slaves! Who was in charge of that situation? I better raise up a leader, and get those folks out of this mess. What’s that dude Moses doing these days? What? He killed somebody!?! He’s working as a goat herder!?! Man, if you want something done right around here, you just have to do it yourself! Now somebody get me some matches. I’m about to light that bush he’s laying next to on fire and fix this mess.”

The Author of the Tall Tale doesn’t think that way at all. He didn’t see a troubled situation, then develop a leader to overcome it. He knew the whole story before it even started, and sewed it all together perfectly through a Tale that covers thousands of years, millions of lives, dozens of biographies, sixty-six books, and a whole bunch of blood, intrigue, romance, rebellion, bravery, heartbreak, and triumph. Creation is a great part of the Tale, but it’s not the whole story.

The author of the Tall Tale does some backtracking once you’re about halfway through with the whole story. He does that kind of thing occasionally, to tie the whole story together in our minds, to help us understand the complete picture of what’s happening in the Tale. Kind of like a soap opera that shows you Lance Buckstrong, handsome police investigator, having a flashback during the funeral of a wealthy tycoon who was murdered. Buckstrong looks at the grieving widow, Camilla Brightface, and remembers that night of passion she and Lance shared, then recalls that moment when she said “I need to go now…I have to see about taking out some extra life insurance on my beau…By the way, can I borrow your pistol?” Of course, that makes it all come together in his head. Buck arrests Camilla, and it all makes sense to us, even if we missed the previous episode. The scriptwriter gave us a moment inside of Buck’s memory to help understand the story as it unfolds. The author of the Tale inserts the same kinds of thoughts in his story to cause it all to make sense to the reader, to help us understand The Whole Story.

You get to a part of the Tall Tale called John. John is telling his part of the story, and in order to tie it all together, to make what has already happened relate to what is about to happen, he has a flashback to “In the beginning…”, just in case we need a little reminder that the Author had the whole story mapped out before it was written.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

It sounds really complicated, but it’s truly pretty simple. The Word…That just represents the thoughts and emotions and ideas of God, and all those thoughts and emotions and ideas culminate themselves into the major player in the Tall Tale, a God-Man named Jesus. All those thoughts and emotions and ideas were always there, so the God-Man was there, too. God is a God of forethought. He didn’t decide one day to make the universe, tap one of the angels on the shoulder, and say “Watch this” with a sly grin on his face. He didn’t make everything explode just to startle Lucifer and make him jump and drop his hair care products while he was primping in a mirror. John reminds us that God made everything, he has a plan, and that the plan is about to come together, through the power of the Author and the God-Man. The whole story is about to start making sense.

The Author of the Tall Tale doesn’t think like the rest of us. We have a temporary perspective on things, while he sees the whole story laid out in front of him. The Author just takes a little pause in John to remind us that he doesn’t think like us. He thinks ahead, and we don’t. Chaos theory says that I can drop a tub of butter on the floor in my kitchen, the impact will cause a termite to fall and hit the ground under my house, the termite will crawl out from under the house into a bed of fire ants, the ants will go crazy and crawl out of their hole, I’ll walk outside and step in the ants, get to slapping and stomping the ground, then somebody driving down the road will see me pulling off my britches in the front yard, lust will fill their hearts, they’ll run off the road, hit a tree, and if you keep playing out the scenario, you can directly link my clumsiness with butter to the earthquake that happens in Argentina six hours later.

If I really had forethought, and chaos theory is true, then I would hold on to my butter a lot tighter. I would probably also eat a lot less Mayfield chocolate ice cream, because I would be able to see myself as a morbidly obese 50 year old, instead of the moderately obese 40 year old I am now.

The point is this…No matter how hard I try, I just can’t see the big picture. Somehow, though, the Author can. I have started writing my little survey of his Tall Tale, and I’m not real sure what the last sentence of it is going to say. With him, though, it’s different. When he wrote, “In the beginning…”, he already knew what the ending was going to be, and every detail in between. He wrote the story in his mind before it ever made it to paper. He made the whole thing, and without him, none of it was made.

And it was good.

The Tall Tale

-TIONS, APPLES, AND NAILS

If there’s any reason at all I’m writing this little essay about the greatest tall tale ever written, it’s because of all the controversy over the -tions.

Let me explain. I call the Bible a tall tale not because I think it’s a crazy myth that’s good for bedtime stories and nothing else. This is the holy book, the only book to be held in the highest regard. I call it The Tall Tale because it has all of the great elements of those epic story tales that captivated us as children. In myth, Pecos Bill rode the whirlwind, just as the real Elijah did thousands of years before. Moses parted the waters of the Red Sea so Israel could walk across the desert for forty years, eons before Johnny Appleseed ever thought of walking across America planting fruit trees. In fable, the giant Paul Bunyan could fell a forest with a swing of his axe; In reality, a vertically challenged boy with a bad complexion named David used a strap of leather and a small stone to fell a career warrior that measured in at over nine feet tall. John Henry, my personal favorite amongst the tall tale heroes, gave his life to show that man’s idea of progress isn’t always best; Jesus Christ, the epic God-Man center of The Tall Tale, gave his life to show that man’s idea of salvation was perfectly flawed.

The Bible is a radically true myth; a real legend; a scholarly study in impossible fact; the best collection of children’s bedtime stories ever assembled; the greatest biography/adventure novel/history book/life manual ever written; the tallest tale one could ever imagine.

People want to believe it. It’s a great story. The problem is, people get hung up on the -tions in and surrounding The Tall Tale.

Crea-tion. Immaculate concep-tion. Transfigura-tion. Resurrec-tion. Salva -tion. Sanctifica-tion. Justifica-tion. Predestina-tion. Revela-tion. Tribula-tion.

People just can’t agree on how all these things occurred, or whether they even occurred (or will occur) at all. Even the church, with all its sub-groups and sects and denominational squabbles over the -tions , can’t agree on these matters.

“Was the world and all in it really created in seven days? Seven thousand years? Or is the alternative to crea-tion, evolu-tion the answer?”

“Was Jesus born in a manger or a cave? Is the whole idea of Mary being impregnated by the Holy Spirit just conjecture, truth, or a young girl’s alibi for getting knocked up during a time feverishly filled with religious superstition?”

“Was John the Baptist the incarnation of the prophet Elijah?”

“Did Jesus really rise from the dead? Or is the whole thing about Easter just something figurative to give us hope and an excuse to buy new pastel clothing every spring?”

“Is Jesus really the only way to heaven?”

“Should we totally separate ourselves from people who aren’t Christians?”

“Is it really just faith that saves us? Shouldn’t something else be required?”

“When is Jesus coming back?”

Here’s another hot, divisive -tion for American culture today: “It’s an elec-tion year, so you better vote righeousness!” (Uhhhh…didn’t Paul say, “There is none righteous, no not one…?”).

Since us as Christians can’t get it together on the -tions, why in the world would we expect non-believers to desire this Christ of the Bible we all love so dearly? The worst by-product of all of this is that since we’ve become a culture of debaters within our own body, within the church, we’ve given non-believers, doubters, and seekers the perfect path out of knowing Christ. We’ve taught them all to debate the fine points, the -tions, when we could have offered them the one point we all agree on (or at least we should)---Christ.

Go to any college town in the United States, and attempt to find ten students who aren’t believers. Witness to them. In most cases, they won’t even attempt to argue Christ or who He was and is. They want to talk about the big –tion,. crea-tion and evolu-tion.

You can’t make them focus on Christ. If you do capture their full attention for a moment, and steer their thoughts toward Jesus, the doubts in their conversation will likely shift to resurrec-tion. They just can’t make themselves believe in something that sounds so impossible, so mythological, so unreal, so heroic. It’s hard to comprehend, to think that it could really be true.

The -tions are important. They are entirely relevant in every Biblical discussion you could ever have. One thing you will see in this little essay on The Tall Tale, though, is an emphasis on a thing I like to call The Whole Story. The Whole Story is the essence of The Tall Tale, the meaning and spirit and intent of it all. So without further adieu, I give you The Whole Story:

Apples and nails.

The End.

Adam and Eve ate an apple they shouldn’t have eaten, and the price for their crime was the death penalty. That penalty has been passed down generation to generation, all the way to us. For the death penalty to be satisfied, someone must die. That someone was Jesus. The method of death---He was nailed to a cross.

Apples and nails.

Here you will find a ordinary man’s interpretation of bits and pieces of the most complexly simple book ever written. Here we’re going to run as fast as we can from the -tions, and dive into the arms of the truly important aspects of The Tall Tale---things like love, grace, passion, power, etc., etc.

Deep enough to drown an elephant, shallow enough for a child to play in.

Welcome to The Tall Tale.