Lunch with Herm and Eutychus

“The Wonder Bible”

“Why always salad?” Herm asked as Eutychus squeezed a slice of lemon onto the bowl of greens in front of him. “I would have taken you for a meat and potatoes man.”

“My wife is a great cook,” said Eutychus, “and the meals she cooks at home are fantastic. So at lunch, I keep it on the slim side.” He patted his belly and smiled. “It would be too easy to lose it right here.”

Herm would not have described Eutychus as overweight, but he was not slim either and with a little carelessness could easily become the former. “I admire your discipline,” Herm continued, “I think it is proper to take care of yourself and eat carefully.” Gracie slipped in beside the table and unceremoniously deposited Herm’s Elbib Meatloaf Special onto the table in front of him, with a large coke.

“You guys all set?” she quipped as she glanced back and forth between the two men with a quick smile. Herm shrugged.

Eutychus nodded his head and pursed his lips. “We’re all set thanks.” He looked back at Herm. Herm had his fork in his left hand as if he was about to eat, but he was staring out the window of the Café. Eutychus followed his eyes out onto the street. The weather had warmed slightly and the sun had come out for the first time since they had set their clocks ahead for the Daylight savings time and the light illuminated Herm’s face with the unique white glare of the bright reflections off the cars parked along the street. His eyes were outside, but Eutychus could tell that his mind was somewhere else. “What’s up?” he asked.

“I was just thinking,” Herm said absently as he turned to face his friend.

Eutychus smiled. “Yes?”

“Food is an amazing thing, isn’t it?”

“I like food, but I never thought about it being amazing. It’s just food.” Eutychus had stabbed a tomato slice and was twirling it on his fork as he spoke.

“Yes, but think about it this way: We can eat a huge variety of things; all different textures, all different tastes, shapes, colors—and as long as we eat a wide variety, we do pretty well.”

Eutychus put the tomato in his mouth. “Ummmhunh,” he intoned as he started chewing.

“But we start to get into trouble if we don’t eat enough—“ Herm was trying to get the ketchup onto his meatloaf without getting it all over his lap. He hit the bottom of the bottle. “Or if we eat too much of only one thing—“ He paused again as he tapped on the throat of the bottle.

“You mean like Meatloaf and ketchup?” Eutychus asked with a grin.

“You know,” Herm said, “I only eat this here—once a week. At home, we are so regimented by the diet required for Kieth’s allergies, that this is a welcome respite for me. It’s actually very good. You should try it sometime.” Another slap and the bottle yielded a red blob of ketchup onto the gray meat.

“But you were saying?” Eutychus asked.

“And then there is junk food.”

Eutychus nodded because his mouth was full of lettuce and he was trying to make sure the dressing did not drip down into his goatee.

“Take Wonder Bread for instance: They take this wonderful whole wheat flour that God made, grind it down into powder and bleach it until there is nothing left except the starch and gluten. Then they add back twelve wonderful vitamins that someone figured were important and call it wonder bread.” Herm paused long enough to take a taste of his mashed potatoes, letting the flavor fill him with his eyes closed. Eutychus finished chewing his lettuce while he waited for Herm to finish his little ritual.

When Herm opened his eyes, Eutychus said, “Go on.”

“What I am getting at is that they took out all kinds of great stuff, like the copper, zinc, silver and loads of complex combinations of vitamins and trace elements and put back what someone thought was important. The stuff is so empty that the Audubon Society recommends that it not be given to ducks or any birds for that matter. You have to wonder how they could get away with calling it bread.” Herm’s eyes twinkled as he speared a cube of meatloaf and put it carefully into his mouth so he would not drip the ketchup onto his tie. “And then, for food to be really useful, one has to exercise, right?”

Eutychus looked up from his salad. “You making a point about me?” he said, “I get plenty of exercise.”

Herm waited until he had swallowed before he answered. “I was making a point, but not about you, directly.”

“Indirectly?”

“No,” Herm replied, “about eating and exercising.” He paused to cut a spear of asparagus.

“Go on,” Eutychus urged him.

“Well, if we eat and don’t exercise, we get fat—and lazy. If we exercise and don’t eat, we starve. We need to do both on a regular basis to be healthy, right? Hence the phrase, ‘No pain, no gain’.”

Eutychus shrugged. “This is supposed to be profound?”

Herm was undaunted. He pointed his knife across the table and shook it at Eutychus as he spoke. “What is profound is that it is true in all aspects of our lives, not just physically.”

“What do you mean?”

“To grow intellectually, you need to eat and exercise also. You read or go to class, that’s like eating and then you do homework and tests, that’s exercising. One without the other is always a disaster. It’s also true emotionally—and spiritually.”

“I had never thought about it that way,” Eutychus confessed. He was done eating so he wiped his lips with his napkin and settled back into the corner of the booth and swung one leg up onto the red vinyl of the seat.

“Sure,” Herm continued, waving his fork and knife around as he spoke, “to continue to grow spiritually we have to eat regularly—and eat a varied diet. We also have to exercise: we have to put what we learn into practice; exercise it, so to speak. Otherwise we just get spiritually fat and lazy.” Herm paused to take a sip of water. “If we try to put Christianity into practice without eating well spiritually, we burn out.” Eutychus could tell that Herm was on a roll, so he waited patiently while Herm chewed another stalk of asparagus. As soon as he swallowed Herm continued. “And if the Bible we eat from is a wonder Bible, and then we try to run the marathon of the Christian life, the same thing will happen.”

“Like the Jefferson Bible?”

Herm’s hands stopped half way through cutting another piece of meatloaf and he looked up. “Jefferson Bible?”

“Thomas Jefferson. I was reading about it on the internet just last week.” Eutychus said, “I’m surprised that you’ve never heard of it.”

“What is it?”

“Well it seems that Jefferson took the Bible and cut out all the stuff that didn’t seem important in the teaching of Jesus and condensed his teachings into a sort of moral handbook by pasting the stuff he saved into a blank book.”

“Hmmm,” Herm intoned through his meatloaf.

“He actually put the Greek, Latin, French and English phrases side by side so he could read them all.”

“Only the teachings of Jesus?” Herm asked, “like a red letter Bible without the black?”

“I’m not sure about the details,” Eutychus confessed, “But that is the impression I got. His intentions were good. He wanted to simply collate the words of Jesus and see them in their purest, uncluttered form.”

“Yes, a veritable Wonder Bible.”

“You might say that.”

“I do say that!” Herm’s eyes grew intense. “My Bible teaches me that ‘All scripture inspired by God is useful for teaching, correcting, rebuking and training in righteousness’,” Herm continued as he pushed the last mouthful of mashed potatoes onto his fork. “Most of the heresy and denominational divisions we see are the result of this kind of thinking: favoring one set of verses over another. If you do that you end up short and usually wrong about something.”

“Do you think that we do that?” Eutychus asked.

“Of course!” Herm was matter-of-fact. “You underline verses you want to remember, right?”

“Of course.”

“And then you go back to your underlining over and over, reinforcing them in your memory and your way of thinking …”

“I guess so.”

Herm set down his utensils on the plate and paused as he stared at Eutychus. “Have you ever considered reading through your bible and studying all the passages you have not underlined or never even thought to underline? What do they mean? Why are they important? Why did God choose to put them there and why did he put them in the order that he did?”

Eutychus took his tea mug in both hands. “I’ve often wondered why God didn’t just give us a good study on grace or faith, or maybe a chapter or two on prayer. It would have been much easier.”

“And it would have saved us a lot of time and aggravation had he just created power shakes and super vitamins while he was at it and given us a mind that knew everything when we were born.” Herm was smiling. “But the way God made us—there is something subtle about eating it the way God made it and having to eat it every day with a wide variety that is somehow important to remaining healthy. I think this is probably true about God’s word also. Wrapped around all the obvious scriptures are subtle essentials amino acids and trace elements that form the whole of scriptures. Perhaps it is not so much specific knowledge but the general forming of our spiritual lives in ways we do not comprehend. The whole thing is further aggravated by these computer search Bibles.”

“How so?”

“Well, as an example, suppose you wanted to do a study on faith, so you got on the computer and typed in the word ‘faith’. You got a huge list that left you with the impression that if you study every verse on faith you will be an expert. Then someone shows you a great passage on faith where the word ‘faith’ does not appear. This is true of most biblical concepts. Suddenly, you realize that the only way you will really understand faith is to read everything anyway. If you do this, your search for faith also feeds your understanding of grace, love, patience, God’s sovereignty and power—“

“Don’t you have one of those programs?” Eutychus asked.

“I use it mainly to find stuff I already know exists, but even that makes me uneasy. Sort of like going to the computer at the MegaSuper grocery store and typing in ‘iron’, because that is what you think you need. One of the things on the list would probably be Wonder Bread, right?”

Eutychus nodded.

“In fact, most of the engineered foods that have iron in the ingredient list would show up, but perhaps not some of the basic foods in which there is plenty of iron because God never put an ingredient list on broccoli, kale, or avocadoes. He just made them to be enjoyed and to strengthen us in ways we may never understand.”

Eutychus looked up from his tea. “And now they are doing this genetic engineering thing …”

“Don’t get me started—“

“I won’t. But it’s kinda like the wonder Bible. I’ve been thinking while you were talking. Have you noticed how hard it is to find just a plain Bible?”

Herm nodded and smiled. “I have.”

“I mean,” Eutychus continued, “everyone thinks that they need to put some kind of spin on the Bible. The words are still there, but they are commented, footnoted, highlighted, segmented with opinions and insights so it almost not the Bible anymore.”

“Imagine,” Herm mused, “if God required us to label our bibles like the FDA requires labeling on food: ‘Ingredients: God’s word, conjecture, commentary, underlining, paragraph headings, cross references; less than two percent of the following: misleading footnotes, sectarian word translation, rationalization, humanistic drivel’ …” Herm’s voice trailed off into a chuckle.

Gracie was clearing the table in her usual efficient manner. Herm looked up. “Gracie, do you own a Bible?” he asked.

“I have one somewhere.” She said.

“Do you know what kind it is?” Herm persisted.

“It’s blue, with a sort of yellow patch on the front. Does it matter?” Gracie had everything from the table stacked in a neat pile that she could carry with both hands.

“Do you read it?”

“Sometimes.” Andy, the cook behind the counter barked something unintelligible and Gracie looked quickly back over her shoulder. “Gotta go,” she said as she lifted the stack of dishes and whisked them away.

Herm spoke to the vacuum of her wake. “Then it doesn’t matter what translation you have, Gracie.” He picked the bill from the table. “My turn.”

Eutychus spoke while Herm scanned the bill. “I remember hearing a story once about a church where someone had written an open letter about the need for having a sermon every Sunday at church. In essence the writer claimed that he had heard some number of thousands of sermons since he had become a Christian and would be hard pressed to remember the details of any one of them in a useful way. He then went on to wonder out loud whether the efforts of the preacher might better be used in doing things like feeding the poor, visiting hospitals and prisons, et cetera.”

Herm had set down the bill and was leaning forward with his arms on the table, listening thoughtfully.

“So anyway,” Eutychus continued, “the letter set off an avalanche of responses and arguments. The whole thing came to an end with a simple letter from a man who wrote that he had been married for twenty years of so. In that time he estimated that his wife had prepared more than twenty thousand meals that he had eaten. He went on to say that though he could not clearly remember the specific menu of any but a few of them, he would be hard pressed to think that they had not done him any good.”

Herm laughed. “I’ll have to remember that.”

Eutychus continued. “I think it is probably the same way with reading the bible. Reading all of it, over and over and letting God decide how his is going to strengthen and bless you through it.”

“Good point.” Herm looked down at the bill again. “I think you need to leave the tip today.”

“You said it was your turn!”

“Gracie remembered your tea,” Herm mused. “Double tip, I think.”

Eutychus reached for his wallet. “Wouldn’t want to disappoint our favorite waitress.”

Herm slid out of the booth and slipped his coat on as he stood up. “Next Monday?”

“Same time. Same place.” Eutychus maundered as he drained the last drop of the most expensive cups of tea he had had in his life.