We drove into our neighborhood today after church and the telephone poles disappeared. They're supposed to -- all the electrical wires & cable stuff is underground. You don't see a thing except one of those big green metal boxes in a yard every so often. I don't even know what those green box things are, I just assume they have something to do with the underground stuff.
I don't mind not seeing all the wires -- I just want everything to work. I like that things can work without seeing all the parts and pieces. All those poles and wires can get pretty ugly.
Some people are like that with the Bible and spiritual things. They want everything to work, but they're not really interested in seeing the infrastructure. Too much referring to chapter and verse puts them off, and sounds like they're being preached at. They want to see it in action. They don't want to be an electrician, or talk to one -- but they want the electricity. They think, why do Christians always have to explain everything?
I think that's fine. When an electrician (or a computer geek, or your auto mechanic, or Paula Dean) starts explaining things you haven't asked about, don't your eyes glaze over? Outside you're polite, but inside it's "not interested!" Some people run into someone who's passionate about the Bible and feel like they're doing the same thing -- don't they realize I'm not into it like they are? And they may feel a bit judged because they think the 'expert' is thinking, "well, you should be interested."
I read that the Communists used to send their recruits out on the street to sell the Communist newspaper and the rookies would be bombarded with questions from people -- questions they couldn't answer. Then they would be offered classes in Communism, which of course they jumped at. If they'd been offered the classes before they knew they needed them, their eyes might have glazed over like mine do when I hear Paula Dean.
So the showing it working, showing that there's answers, can serve to point out that there's a source of answers and of things working.
There's more, though. All I have to do for the electricity to flow at my house is pay the bill and plug things in and know how to throw a breaker. If I also needed to personally have a better understanding of amps and volts and current and stuff -- and if I didn't, things wouldn't work right -- well, I'd be motivated to get more interested in how electricity worked.
And once I did get more interested, I might even become so interested, so enthralled, so drawn to the source of this thing that was benefiting me so much, that something crazy happened that I never would have imagined...
I might become like one of those people who was not only interested in things working, but in how they work. And talking about it.
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