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Even Gandalf can't make truth disappear
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I don't know how it is with you, but if I stay somewhere as a guest, and I happen to find on a shelf or in a drawer a book that contains material that is critical of evangelical Christians, one of the last things that occurs to me is to physically rip those pages out and throw them away. Call me crazy, but it would just seem rude... and a little childish... not to mention disrespectful of the author to do such a thing.
How odd to happen across a story on Comcast.net that referenced a Details magazine interview with Ian McKellen, best known for his portrayal of Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, in which the aging British actor admits that when he stays in hotels, he routinely opens the Gideon Bible to Leviticus 18:22 - and then tears out that page because its condemnation of homosexuality offends him!
"I'm not proudly defacing the book," said McKellen, "but it's a choice between removing that page and throwing away the whole Bible."
Seriously? Is there really no other reasonable option? How about simply not reading it? Or what about lodging a complaint with the hotel management? The fact of the matter is that McKellen's beef is not with the hotel, or even the Gideons. His struggle is quite clearly with God and with his conscience. The very idea that the Holy Bible contains a passage which straightforwardly identifies the actor's chosen lifestyle as "detestable" in the eyes of God somehow compels him to serially vandalize complimentary bedside reading material.
C. S. Lewis wrote, "A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell." It might be added that a man cannot make the plain declarations of God's Word disappear or cease to be true by tearing them out of the Bible. Not even a wizard can make the truth vanish.
There once was a king in Judah named Jehoiakim, who listened as the words of the prophet Jeremiah were read from a scroll. They were words of warning, and judgment for sin, calling the king and the people to turn from their wicked deeds and return to God with sincere and humble hearts. The king did not like the sound of these words. He rather liked the life of sin he had chosen. So Jehoiakim took the scroll from the hands of the reader, cut it in pieces with his knife, and boldly and fearlessly threw it into the fire. Here is the rest of the story:
After the king burned the scroll containing the words that Baruch had written at Jeremiah's dictation, the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah: "Take another scroll and write on it all the words that were on the first scroll, which Jehoiakim king of Judah burned up. Also tell Jehoiakim king of Judah, 'This is what the LORD says: You burned that scroll and said, "Why did you write on it that the king of Babylon would certainly come and destroy this land and cut off both men and animals from it?" Therefore, this is what the LORD says about Jehoiakim king of Judah: He will have no one to sit on the throne of David; his body will be thrown out and exposed to the heat by day and the frost by night. I will punish him and his children and his attendants for their wickedness; I will bring on them and those living in Jerusalem and the people of Judah every disaster I pronounced against them, because they have not listened.'" So Jeremiah took another scroll and gave it to the scribe Baruch son of Neriah, and as Jeremiah dictated, Baruch wrote on it all the words of the scroll that Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire. And many similar words were added to them. (Jeremiah 36:27-32)
The word of the Living God cannot be destroyed. Burn it with fire, and He will reproduce it again. Shred it into confetti, and it will appear once more. Eradicate every sentence from every Bible on the face of the earth that exposes your sins and condemns your evil deeds, yet the testimony of the truth of God will remain, calling every man to forsake his sin and turn to the Creator and Redeemer who alone can save them from eternal ruin.
The fact that the very existence of these words would bother a man so much that he feels his only rational choice is to rip them from their place is itself a testimony to the power of God's word. One wonders if Ian McKellen feels the same compulsion to rip pages out of other books whose contents condemn his practice. No? Why the Bible then? Because it is God's book... and the darkened heart of man cannot bear to have its sins exposed by the searcher of hearts.
This is not about homosexuality, though the Bible, as McKellen has noticed, plainly condemns the practice of homosexuality as sin. Imagine an alcoholic who could not be near a Bible without ripping out Ephesians 5:18 ("Be not drunk with wine, which is disippation"), or a thief who had to excise Exodus 20:15 ("Thou shalt not steal"), or a chronic over-eater who had to tear out Proverbs 23:21 ("The glutton will come to poverty"). As if removing these passages from Holy writ makes the practices they condemn acceptable.
But the Bible does not expose sin in order merely to condemn. God's word identifies sin in order to humble us and turn us to the way of salvation. Here is another passage that identifies a number of sinful practices:
Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11)
There is hope for men and women who are lost in sin. It is not found through the redaction of Scripture, but through the redemption offered to those who repent and turn in faith to Jesus Christ.
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