Don't Ask the Fish

OK, so I was just listening to this talk radio show and they were talking about the final season of the Sopranos coming out. Anyway, this one guy had, some time ago, become Mormon and so he’s stopped watching R rated movies (which includes the Sopranos). But what he was saying was really interesting. He was talking about how after not being exposed to the violence and sex and language for awhile you become more sensitive. Now, he says, when he sees even movies with a lesser rating, he’s often a bit shocked by what passes as PG-13 for instance.

He also talked about how one time back in college he didn’t have cable for a year. This time the experience was less due to religious influence and more on the financial side, which can prove to be far more persuasive at times. Well after a year he finally got cable again, which he was quite stoked about, and for about the next week he had the same sort of conversation over and over with his friends. He’d go to them every day and be like, “Whoa, did you see [such-and-such] last night?! Did you see that one thing? Can you believe that?” To which his friends would respond, “What? I don’t remember that.” Until after further provoking that might finally result in his friends remembering whatever crazy/provocative/delusional thing it was he saw on TV. His friends were simply too desensitized to have noticed those things as unusual or memorable.

“And,” he said, “that lasted about a week until I became just as desensitized as everyone else.”

His point was that we become ultra-sensitive (or is it just less desensitized, but in relation to everyone else we only think it’s ultra-sensitive?) after we’ve taken a step back and removed ourselves from the situation for a bit.

Here’s what it made me start to think about though. I wonder what types of implications this has on us and the Bible. I mean, how desensitized have we become to the Bible and what it says?

The beauty of creation, relationships, community, men, and women.

The wonder of healings, sacrifice, symbolism, and women.

The horror of floods, plagues, genocide, and war.

Much of it becomes lost on us as we’re submersed in the story over and over. Sadly, while there are many advantages to growing up in a healthy church, I’m not sure this is one of them. Much as a small boy who’s grown up amidst death and violence on TV could never conceive of being shocked or appalled by a show like the Sopranos, a girl who’s grown up in the church may never be struck by the gruesome nature of a flood or an army coming to destroy a whole group of people – men, women, children, and goats. What might that look like? What might that smell like for heaven's sake?

Or, on a more positive note, what about the wonder of Jesus coming to a small fishing community in a backwoods part of the Roman empire and healing blind people? Or the shear brilliance of some of Jesus’ responses to questions. Or that He dared to proclaim that his own time, a time of persecution which eventually resulting in a war that ended in the destruction of the temple, was the “year of the Lord’s favor.”

Or what about this, the idea that that guy from 2000 years ago is still alive today and is still claiming that this is the “year of the Lord’s favor.” If that doesn’t sound absolutely ridiculous to you…exactly.

I don’t know about you but I want all of these things to hit me again for the first time. I’m just not sure how to make that happen.

There's this saying, if you want to know what water is like, don't ask the fish.