Op-ed: Bibles and basketball

My attention was snagged today by a tweet dated August 5 from one Brooks Buser, above, that said ‘Tomorrow night, deep in the mountains of Papua New Guinea, after 5 months of teaching that started in Genesis 1:1, the gospel will be presented to the Amdu people for the first time in their known history. Please be praying for the missionary team.’

My attention was snagged because I was horrified and repulsed. What on earth makes meddlers like this feel entitled to “teach” strangers nonsense out of a religious book? What makes them think they have a right to intrude on distant people and tell them what’s what, especially when their idea of what’s what is an old impoverished creation myth followed up with a savior myth? What makes them think they have knowledge, and that the Amdu people need that knowledge?

Three days later this arrogant missionary tweeted “Thank you for the prayers for Amdu people and team. By God’s grace, there are now members of that people group who are reconciled to God, who no longer have their sins counted against them.”

So until then this “God” character had been counting the Amdu people’s “sins” against them? Even though they’d never heard of Brooks Buser’s Mister God and thus could hardly be expected to share that God’s view of what “sins” are? Buser believes in an incoherent and malevolent jumble of codswallop like that, so fanatically that he feels the need to force himself and his codswallop on remote people who didn’t put in a request for it?

And, especially, Buser feels entitled to do all that during a lethal pandemic?

There are thousands of replies to Buser’s tweet, and if there are any favorable ones they are well hidden. Anil Dash expressed the point crisply:

Leave them alone. Your arrogance is so extreme that you’ll endanger them during a global pandemic, all purely for you to be able to perform to fellow white supremacist Christians.

More outrage was expressed here.

But never you mind about the pandemic, never mind how intrusive and arrogant it is for bible-thumpers to press their holy book on strangers in remote parts of the world when they could pass on a deadly virus, Brooks Buser knows better.

He starts with a homely, just one of the guys analogy.

As a fan of both the [National Football League] and the [National Basketball Association], it has been with great expectation that I have been watching and waiting as they plan to start (and restart) their season in this COVID-19 world … It is interesting, though, to hear some variation of “safety is our top priority” being preached at every turn by basketball and football officials as they get their seasons going.

What makes it interesting is that we all know safety is not the top priority – football and basketball are. If safety is the top priority, then playing football and basketball are bad ideas. Staying home, social distancing, facemasks, and a litany of other things would be “top priority.” But safety, as important as it is, is never the top priority for those who have a higher goal than just surviving.

And basketball is that higher goal! Who isn’t willing to die for basketball? What is more idealistic, more elevated, more higher, than throwing away your life for the sake of seeing a basketball game up close and personal with other fans of the game? With any luck you might kill off some friends or family members in the process.

Ok so it’s a crap analogy, but his point is that thrusting oneself on strangers to persuade them to follow your religion instead of theirs (or none) is a Far Higher Goal than mere survival. After all, you get all the ice cream and basketball you want once you’re dead and sitting in God’s TV room.

For the Christian, safety is never our highest goal. And for those seeking to take the gospel to the people/language groups that still have no church among them, safety is a distant luxury they died to long ago. It’s been said many times but bears repeating: the final 3,100 language groups with no church among them are not random in their disbursement—they are especially located in the most difficult and unsafe locations in the world. That’s why they are still unreached. While there is much that we can and should do to prepare our future ambassadors to reach those peoples, there will always be a strong element of risk involved. Not foolish or unwise risk, or risk for personal glory, but inherent, unavoidable, God-honoring risk to do the task the Master has laid before them.

And blah blah blah – you could write the rest of it in your sleep.

What’s the point of it all though? If God is such hot shit why did God stick some people in “the most difficult and unsafe locations in the world” so that they would miss out on The Gospel all these years? When God could just tell them about it, or miraculously move some goddy people there to tell them about it, or blow down the trees and flatten the mountains? Why make obstacles? Why let all those generations of people burn in hell or live forever in a dentist’s waiting room or whatever it is that happens to the people God condemns, until this particular moment in time?

How does Brooks Buser know the missionaries are not going against God’s plan by flying in? How does he know God didn’t intend Papua New Guinea to stay godless forever? Why are some interventions what we’re supposed to be doing while others are deadly sins? How is all of this teased apart? God’s plan over here, bad mistake over there – why aren’t there charts?

I never can figure it out. I don’t think anyone else can either.