GYPSY Joy

I love my GPS.  It is a bare bones replacement for our first barebones GPS. It does the job.  I am not sure exactly HOW we got by before the advent of the affordable (i.e. cheap) GPS.

When we were living in Botswana, we borrowed a GPS from our good friend Bob G.  We used it to go north, but there’s really only one road, so it was more of a convenience than a necessity.  On the other hand, when we went to Cape Town, it was a necessity. I don’t know how we could have navigated there, without the help of that little, out-of-date, computer.

Recently we were with a CRU staff couple in a rental car in England.  We had their GPS, which they called Gypsy, and it was again invaluable.  The roads there are a bit tricky for us foreigners, and even with Gypsy, we got off track a couple of times.

Of course GPS’s are NOT infallible.  Occasionally the GPS gets lost, or leads you astray.  Recall that famous episode of the TV show, The Office, where Michael’s new GPS tells him to drive into the lake, which Michael obediently does.  Recently our GPS seemed to get totally lost and told us we were someplace we weren’t, then seemed to change its mind and told us to go further- towards our actual destination.  How this could happen seems to defy computer logic.

GPS’s are very handy but NOT infallible.  They are a convenience to keep us on track. It is quite easy, virtually natural, to think the Bible in exactly the same terms. In fact, it seems that American Christianity mostly views the Bible just like a GPS- useful but not infallible.

“No way! “ You say.

“Way!” says I.  We would NEVER vocalize that thought, but we harbor it.

We doubt mostly, the infallibility of the following parts of the Bible:

• Biblical dietary laws,
• Sabbath keeping,
• Forgiving others,
• Loving our enemies,
• Keeping our thoughts pure,
• Praying,
• Studying Scripture,
• And… I think you get the point.

We want to pick and choose.  It works with GPS’s, but not so well with Scripture.