SSS: Recontextualize, or Why Modernize the Bible?

One thing I miss about the church I go to now is having a church library. When I was younger, my parents and I attended an Alliance church. I could honestly have cared less about the books, something the English major in me cringes over now, but I loved the media section. Our church library had Veggietales DVDs, McGee and Me! videos, and my personal favourite – Adventures in Odyssey tapes.

There were a few years where I swear those were all we played in our car. We’d hear the stories of Whit, Connie, Eugene, and everyone else in the little town of Odyssey. I always wanted to have a Whit’s End or Imagination Station near me but had to settle for the Tim Hortons down the road. I get that apple fritters and Roll Up the Rim is exciting, but it was never quite the same as a phone booth that let you experience what life was like in Bible times. (Side note: I think I just realized where my obsession with Doctor Who started!)

Anyways, after exhausting our church library, my parents bought me a few of the Odyssey CD collections. I still have them packed away with a bunch of my other CDs. But one story in particular has always stood out to me, and I decided to give it a fresh listen for this post. Needless to say, I enjoyed it just as much now as I did as a kid.

SSSG has been covering Gideon the last couple of months, and I’ve mentioned that his story is my favourite Bible story. And honestly, a large part of that is because of how Odyssey told it. Instead of just telling the story or letting us experience it through a trip in the Imagination Station, “Passages” took a very different approach.

Judges in the Wild West

Odyssey has this character named Tom Riley. His son, Timmy, passed away as a child, but this story is about an adventure Timmy and his friend Alice had before he died. They were transported to another world, to the country of Marus, where they led a revolution against the Adrians.

The world they arrive is like something out of a western. The first thing they see are horse riders burning a farm. After escaping, they come to realize that Alice’s eyes are different than normal. They are normally brown, but in this world, one is blue and the other is green.

They make their way to a log cabin where they meet a guy name Fletcher. Somehow, inexplicably, Alice already knows his name. Then we get some background. Characters talk about how they have turned against the Unseen One – “the creator of all things, the ruler of our people, the judge of our thoughts, the lover of our hearts” – by choosing to worship the gods of the Adrians instead.

It’s then discovered that in this world, Alice is some sort of prophet. She can’t cook worth beans (or cook beans for that matter), but somehow a feast has appeared on Fletcher’s table. She tells Fletcher that the Unseen One has called him, a simple mountain man, to lead a rebellion against the Adrians. His first task is to burn down the town hall, which the Adrians have turned into a temple for their gods.

If you’ve been tuning in the last few months, this should sound sort of familiar. A messenger from God, an angel, appeared to tell Gideon to tear down some Midianite idols. He was hesitant at first, but willing to obey what God had called him to.

From here, the story unfolds along the same lines as Gideon’s. Fletcher rallies the Marusians to rise up against the Adrians. They gather a huge army, but they’re pretty scared at first. So Fletcher asks Alice for a sign from the Unseen One, and he gets one that involves a piece of paper instead of a sheep’s fleece.

Fletcher then sends anyone home who doubts that they can win (like Gideon), but he senses something is still wrong. Alice tells them to bring in a barrel of water. Again, like with Gideon, anyone who cupped the water to their mouth is sent home, but the people who drank from a shared cup (instead of lapping like a dog with Gideon) gets to stick around.

And then comes the battle. Fletcher’s 300 man army gathers as many torches, lamps, cowbells (because it’s a western) and trumpets as they can. They surround the city, light them all at once, and then charge in. Like in Judges, the combination of lights and sounds made it seem like there were thousands upon thousands, and the Adrians (like the Midianites) fled immediately!

Now Odyssey doesn’t go into detail about Succoth and the golden ephod. I get it – those aren’t really stories we normally tell kids. But they do talk about Fletcher refusing to be made king. He places the focus back on the Unseen One, like Gideon did with God. I can respect that. It’s a show for kids, and they’re trying to focus on the lesson about faith and trusting God even in the darkest of circumstances.

As the story closes, a grown up Alice recounts, “Maybe we were allowed to experience Marus so we could understand faith in God better in this world.” This is a lot like something C.S. Lewis says at the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (which I’ve mentioned before). He writes that the whole reason Lucy, Edmund, and Eustace (and technically us as readers) were allowed to visit Narnia and meet Aslan was so they could get to know God better in our world.

The Danger of Familiarity

On the “For Parents” section of the “Passages” series’ website, it says, “All of the ‘Passages’ stories are based squarely on key episodes of scriptural history. The names have been changed, the details have been altered, and the setting has been moved to an exciting land of Marus. As you listen to the story, you may recognize the basic outlines, key characters, and scriptural lessons from the Bible stories. We used this fictional device because familiarity can sometimes dull the impact of an oft-told tale” (http://www.whitsend.org/passages/forparents/).

I think this is why Gideon’s story has stuck with me all these years. I have no idea anymore whether I had heard Gideon’s story before, but how Odyssey told it made me fall in love with it. Hearing it through a different, somewhat more familiar lens, is what made the story memorable.

Now the question could be asked whether this is right. Scripture is the Word of God after all, and what right do we have to change or adapt the words of Scripture to tell a story through a new lens? Should we not simply be satisfied with reading the actual story to kids? After all, if God is going to convict them, He can do so just as easily through His Word than through some reinterpretation of it.

But at the risk of sounding heretical, I’m going to suggest that there is value in forgoing the physical words of Scripture in favour of the spirit behind its stories and its messages. I’m not saying throw the Bible away, but I am saying that sometimes the truths of Scripture will actually stand out more when we place them in a context kids, teens, or adults today will better resonate with.

There’s a reason we act stories out with kids during Sunday School. Or paraphrase the more difficult or gruesome bits. Adapting the story to make it more kid friendly or memorable is not necessarily wrong so long as we do not lose the truth in the adaptation.

I remember sitting through a hermeneutics class back in my undergrad (hermeneutics being a fancy word for the method(s) we use to interpret Scripture) where my professor told us a story that I’m going to try to repeat now with my own little spin.

It’s Sunday morning in a small town. A man hopped in his car and started driving to the next town over, about 30 minutes away, where his church was. About halfway there, he heard a loud popping noise. Oh no, not now! he thought. That’s my second flat this month, and I haven’t had time to pick up a spare!

The man quickly pulled over, got out of his car, and assessed the damage. The hole wasn’t huge, but his tire was deflating pretty quickly. His hand went to his pocket, only to realize he had forgotten his cell phone at home! So there he was, stuck between two towns, with no idea how to fix his tire.

He started pacing, hoping someone would pass by soon to help. Looking at his watch, he calculated that if God sent a tire from heaven this instant, he would probably just make it to church on time. That’s when he saw a car off in the distance. And when he saw who’s car, he said a little prayer of thanksgiving. It was the pastor’s car! If anyone was going to make sure our hero got to church on time, it was the pastor.

Or so the man thought as the pastor drove right by him. Don’t get me wrong. The pastor saw his churchgoing friend on the side of the road and even had the common courtesy to feel bad for him, but as we've already said, church time was approaching. If he stopped to help our hero, then the pastor would be late, and how could they possibly have church without him? It was missions Sunday after all, and he had to be there to remind his congregants of the mission field around them. So, absentmindedly saying a quick prayer that God would send someone to help him, the pastor drove on by.

The man was shocked, but he didn’t have too much time to dwell on it because suddenly another car appeared off in the distance. This time, it was the church treasurer. But like the pastor, the treasurer was also afraid of not making it to church on time. After all, who was going to pass out the offering plates if she wasn’t there? She felt bad, but she knew her duty to the church was more important than making sure one regular old churchgoer made it that day. And that’s what left our hero standing on the side of the road, mouth wide, not sure what to do next. If pastors or church treasurers weren’t going to stop to help him, who would?

See where this is going?

At this point, a third car appeared off in the distance. And in this car was the once conservative Christian turned atheist. Or if I can exaggerate, a terrorist. Or someone part of any other group Christians tend to marginalize or villainize. This person who had felt the brunt of overly religious Christianity pulled over, apologized he had no spare tire of his own to offer, but used his cellphone to call a tow truck. He followed after the truck to the local mechanic, stayed until the entire job was done, and then footed the bill himself.

To adapt Jesus’ words, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who had the flat tire?”

You see, a lot of us have probably heard the parable of the good Samaritan so many times that we’ve grown desensitized to what actually makes this story so amazing. We might have heard in a sermon that the Jews and the Samaritans didn’t get along, but to truly understand what this parable meant to Jesus’ listeners, we need to understand that Jews and Samaritans HATED each other.

The Jews thought the Samaritans had sacrificed all that was good and holy about them, giving up their inheritance as God’s chosen people to worship other gods. The Samaritans were the scum of the earth, but it was a Samaritan – not the priest or Levite who you would expect would be helpful – who came to the aid of the beaten up Jew.

Now please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not trying to correlate Jewish-Samaritan relations with how Christians interact with atheists or groups that disagree with our beliefs. But if we’re honest, a lot of us Christians don’t treat certain groups all that well. And that’s why I think this retelling is so effective.

There is absolutely value in Scripture. The Bible is the first and most obvious way God speaks to us, and we should never allow modernized takes like Narnia or Odyssey to replace the real thing. But there is something about Fletcher’s rebellion or the Parable of the Flat Tire that resonates with us and makes the truths of Scripture come alive in fresh ways.

In short, take advantage of the opportunity to recontextualize Bible stories in your ministries. Feel free to enjoy the odd retelling or a familiar story. But always always always encourage returning to the source material. After hearing the original and modernized versions together, you might be amazed at what truths God will open up to you.