I drove past a church that had a message on its sign at the driveway entrance:  “The Ten Commandments Are Not Multiple Choice.”  To me, that is akin to another one commonly seen, “What Part Of Thou Shall Not Don’t You Understand?” signed, “God.”

One only can imagine the crowds of people attracted to such churches. (That’s because they only exist in the realm of imagination.)  How the Christian faith can be expressed with belligerence and the edge of anger is a mystery to me.

At my seminary there were a number of pretty conservative students who were there only because their bishops or district superintendants or someone in their church’s hierarchy required them to earn the Master of Divinity degree.  These guys already understood God, Jesus, and the Bible with a clarity that eludes most others, and were deeply suspicious of professors who challenged them to think beyond their accepted conventions.  Sometimes they remarked how they would “pray” for the professors to be “saved.”  Uh huh, I’m sure.

A little story that seems applicable appears in the current Christian Century, describing the experience of a Sri Lankan Buddhist during his days at Garrett-Evangelical Seminary.  One of the other students, a Christian, declared publically that the Buddhist was “going to hell,” presumably for not sharing the Christian’s outlook and faith.  The Buddhist responded that the Christian likely would end up in heaven, but his “noisy theological disputes” would be so loud and disruptive that he, the Buddhist, would “voluntarily choose hell, where he might compassionately serve suffering souls.”

What part of “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself” (a teaching attributed to Jesus) don’t Christians understand?