I have a serious question about a silly topic: preachers who wear toupees. I am not dogmatic about very many religious things. I’m pretty easygoing and tend to think, as a rule, grace is always better than judgment.

Except for this. I am judgmental about this one thing, almost all the time: I personally have a hard time respecting a preacher who wears a toupee. Seriously. In the town where I live, there are at least a couple of highly visible (and well-respected) senior pastors of large churches who disguise their baldness under a synthetic rug. They’re not fooling anyone. Pretty much everyone knows. And yet they continue to perpetrate the fraud.

The guy below is not one of them, but it makes for a good illustration, in an insane televangelist kind of way:

Anyway, toupee-wearing ministers really bother me.

Here’s the dictionary definition of the noun “lie“:

lie (n.)

1. A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood.

2. Something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression.

So there’s a minister in Maryland who has started a grass-roots movement with a catchy name. The “Pray Down the High Gas Prices Movement,” courtesy of Seventh-Day Adventist Rocky Twyman, carries with it a simple request: Please, God, will you release us from this burden of high gas prices?

Quote from the article in the Baltimore Sun:

———
Twyman…believes the spike in oil prices and natural disasters of late are a sign that the end of the world is nigh. “We just think there needs to be some divine intervention. Because man has become greedy. How much money do they have to make while all these people are struggling?”
———

Of course, “struggling” is relative. The article later notes that German drivers would be thrilled to pay $4 a gallon for gas, which is half of what they’re used to. Maybe Europeans are the ones who should be praying. Or maybe God has already answered Twyman’s prayer on behalf of America?

A few more observations and questions:

• Seventh-Day Adventists have thought the end of the world was nigh for about the last 150 years. It started with the super-crazy Millerite movement back in 1844. It morphed into the Adventist-offshoot (waaaay offshoot) David Koresh and the Branch Davidians 15 years ago. Then again, Christians of all stripes have thought the end was near since, well, the Gospel of Mark reported Jesus saying the end was near.

• Are high gas prices really a spiritual burden? Or are they just an annoyance because we like to drive a lot?

• Should we really be asking God to remove annoyances from our lives? Especially the ones that inconvenience us because we like trucks and SUVs and they use a lot of gas?

• Isn’t it a wee bit selfish to request almighty intervention because of an annoyance? I can think of some other annoyances I’d like God to do something about that rank way ahead of the price of unleaded. Like maybe child poverty. Or the African AIDS crisis. Or human trafficking. Or guys who wear hands-free Bluetooth earpieces when their hands are entirely free of anything that would prevent them from holding an actual, real phone.

• Rocky Twyman is a really cool name.

• I’ve seen barefoot children in Nicaragua playing with sticks, while their parents watch from cardboard huts while a trash fire rages nearby and fills the kids’ lungs and eyes and ears and mouth with poisonous smoke from tires and dirty diapers and sewage. With vultures hovering overhead. Because that’s pretty much what day-to-day life is like when you live inside a trash dump. If I ever ask God to remove an annoyance from my life — an inconvenient speedbump on the road to Western-style prosperity — then I pray He tells me to shut up and think about those kids. And maybe, while I’m in a praying mood, pray for them instead.

Sheesh.

[If you want, you can sign an online petition sponsored by Citizens to Pray Down the High Gas Price Movement. If you do, you agree to pray three times a day for God to apply the Balm of Gilead to our itchy gas pumps. You also agree to endure my mockery. You also assert your willingness to receive an emailed photo, from me, of a starving, glue-addicted kid from La Chureca. So take that.]

Have you heard of the Wiki Bible project? I hadn’t, until an article in the June 23 issue of Newsweek caught my attention. The project started up in January as a way to assemble “an original, open content translation of the Bible’s source texts.”

Are you fluent in ancient Greek or Hebrew? Then jump right in! Anyone can participate. All you have to do is stay faithful to the original source texts but keep from borrowing from copyrighted versions already on the market. Also, you need to keep it “simple, non-technical, robust, and easy-to-understand.“

Sounds about as easy as shoving a big, black King James Bible through the eye of a needle.

Predictably, some people love it — the result may be the first open-source Bible translation in the public domain. Other people hate it, because, by golly, people who translate the Bible ought to have some definable credentials and scholarship behind them. Or at least the authority of some religious institution. Or, lacking that, a big religious publisher like Lifeway. Right?

For some people, Bible translations are serious business and pretty much always controversial. Some KJV-only purists still think the translators of the New International Version were Satan-worshippers. More recently, people got all upset when Today’s New International Version came out with language updates changing generic phrases like “sons of God” to “children of God.” And 15th-century Reformer Jan Hus got executed because he supported the work of rebel Bible translator John Wycliffe. Hus was burned at the stake by Church authorities with copies of Wycliffe’s translation used as kindling. (The “love your neighbor” stuff apparently doesn’t apply when Bible translations are, um, at stake.)

So this WikiBible thing should be interesting. Keep up with the discussion history of the chapters for some serious theological throwdowns. Contribute if you want, but watch out for the pitchfork-wielding hordes. They won’t beat down your door. But they may show up in your in-box.

…my superhero name would totally be Ray.

Ultraviolet Ray.

1. You wouldn’t be able to see me.
2. I could damage your skin if you got too close to me, without proper protection.
3. I could immediately disinfect any water I touch.

Invisibility, the ability to tan and/or sunburn skin at will, and a useful proclivity for sterilizing drinking water. I bet you can’t come up with a more useful trio of superpowers than that.

You’re welcome to try, though.

[Related post: I Am Good, Helpful, and Dull ]