Getting Out of My Comfort Zone

 I don’t think I realized it much at the time, but I was gradually gaining more exposure to the way people think outside the Bible Belt.

One day I drove by a house in our neighborhood and noticed Texas license plates on the back of station wagon.  We ended up getting acquainted with these displaced Texans.    I was soon to realize that our only real common bond was in the fact that we both grew up in Texas.  He was a  history teacher at the local community college.  He and I were not on the same page politically, philosophically, of theologically.  I would call him a theological liberal, and he probably would consider that a compliment.

I think his father was a lawyer in Fort Worth.  He attended law school at the University of Texas and dropped out after he had an argument with a professor over justice.  The professor convinced him that if he wanted justice he needed to enroll in the school of philosophy, which sounded good to him.  He picked up a master’s degree at UT and moved to Syracuse where he pursued a PhD in philsophy.  His father was paying for the schooling, but insisted on approving the courses he took.  My neighbor rebelled and left Syracuse, and had enough academic credential to land a teaching job in Jamestown.

He was searching for something he wasn’t finding, and I don’t think I helped him that much in the search.  He would attend our services, and discuss the Bible until late in the evening.  As much as he was interested in the Bible, he held to an anti-supernatural bias, and never could bring himself to read the text in an authoritative manner.  

Still he was curious.  Once I attended one of his classes.  He was lecturing on the Protestant Reformation.  At one point he asked me to tell how the Churches of Christ fit into that picture.  On another occasion he invited me into his home for a discussion with some young students, and a friend who had just graduated from Boston University is some area that touched on theology.   Some of the members of this group thought they could discredit this Bible banging preacher from the South.   About the time they brought out their heavy artillery, my friend said, “No you don’t understand.  I could almost go for this.”   As far as I know “almost” never got there.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the friendship and the camaraderie. Ann got along well with his wife, who was also a Texan, and a firm traditional Southern Baptist.  She didn’t buy into her husband’s liberalism.  In some ways Paul was a loose cannon.  He would ask dumb questions like, “Do dolphins have souls? After all they’re very intelligent, and in some ways they can communicate with humans.”   

I didn’t pay much attention to questions like that, but he forced me to look at my own assumptions and presuppositions, to think outside the box.  Never again would I be content simply to repeat the tenets and beliefs I had heard others say.