Tough Sledding

We lived near a woods when I was a child. One snowy day, I was sledding on a trail inside the woods. I was going too fast, missed the curve and crashed into a tough 'ol tree. A neighbor teen was passing by, took pity on me and pulled me on my sled up the hill to my home. Since then I've experienced various kinds of tough sledding.

One of those tough moments has been explaining, interpreting or at times even massacring difficult passages in the Bible. I'm old enough to remember when we only had the King James version which although often beautiful was difficult explaining English nearly half a century old. Today we have almost a superfluity of translations and transliterations. Many are excellent, helpful while others may be a bit underwhelming.

As a salty senior, and a clergyman no less, my senior moment crept in when I realized that there still is some tough sledding in the forest of difficult passages. Sometimes even the most astute biblical scholars get derailed or delight in derailing others. We've seen this in ongoing controversies. Did God create the heavens and the earth in six days? Darwin said that species evolved but did he really exclude the involvement of any supernatural intervention? Do all creationists deny the possibility of evolution within a species?

Our society is confronted with many challenges that have been questioned or championed by the Holy Scriptures. This could include anything from capital punishment to same-sex marriage; the holiness of the Sabbath (Sunday) and its secular exploitation; or abortion: yes, no, maybe? What about dietary regulations and foot washing? Or turning your cheek to an avowed enemy? Or terms such as incarnation, justification, sanctification, atonement and escatology? And who has the final word on heaven and hell, limbo and Gehenna, purgatory and hades?

I know what I believe, what I would like to believe, and I see others, not unlike me, sliding down some treacherous snow-packed trails lined with potential obstacles along the pathway. How many times I made it to the bottom successfully I don't know. What I do remember is the time when I crashed. Those memories often are the ones that really matter.