Letter to the Editor: Response to February 9 Word for Word column

To the Editor:

I enjoy reading the Word for Word column each week. It is interesting and enlightening to glean insights from area ministers, pastors and priests.

Rev. VanderVelden’s entry in the February 9, 2022 edition of The Standard gave me a new perspective on the Big Bang theory. While I hold to a more conservative, six-day account of creation, I respect and appreciate Rev. VanderVelden’s view and how he arrived at it. What I do find unsettling in his article, however, is when he questions whether the stories in Genesis “entirely represent fact”.

The conservative, fundamentalist view prefers to use the word “accounts”, not “stories”. The account of Noah and the flood, for example, can make a great story for kids in a Sunday school classroom, complete with the flannel graph of the ark and all the cute little animals on it. If this account were just a story or a fable, then it would end there, but it has a far deeper meaning. Noah’s ark was a type, or foreshadow, of Christ. Just as those in Noah’s time needed to run to the ark for safety and deliverance, so we need to run to Christ for the same. Just as there was one door to the ark, there is just one door for salvation today, the door of Christ.

My point is, we cannot discount any part of the Bible by calling it just a story, or saying it is not fact. In the children’s group I work with, we teach the kids that the Bible is absolute truth, and every word of it is true and factual. I would not want these kids to get any other message.

There are two ways to read the Bible, God’s holy word. We can use either a pen or a black marker. If we use a pen, we can underline the passages that are especially meaningful to us. Conversely, if we use a black marker, we can cover up all the passages we don’t agree with or make us feel uncomfortable.

I must confess, I sometimes feel tempted to take my black marker in hand and block out those verses I don’t understand or that are a challenge to whatever sinful lifestyle I am engaging in. Many churches have successfully done that. Never mind that fornication, adultery, homosexuality and abortion are expressly forbidden in God’s word. We have blackened out those verses, so everything is now okay. Or is it? The challenge before us, as churches and as individuals, is to hold high the banner of God’s word. It will give us guidance in the midst of our confusion.

The skies of Waukon are graced with lovely steeples - beautiful churches, inside and out. May the truth these churches preach be just as beautiful, as they preach the uncompromised truth from the word of God, the Bible. Then may their shrinking congregations grow in numbers. Because, deep down, people really want to hear the truth. May the masses then flock to your sanctuaries during those troubled times. This is my prayer.

Arthur Clocksin
Waukon