Bare Naked Words by Ken Wilson

Something is happening.  After centuries wrestling with the “doctrine of biblical inspiration” believers have worked themselves into an exhausted lethargy about this book.  We’ve been so busy either debunking or defending it, that we’ve forgotten to simply enter it on it’s own terms to know what punch it packs.  But what I see happening is a growing body of people who have no dog in that old fight.  They don’t approach the Bible with any pre-conceived notions about its inspiration or lack thereof. They could care less about words like inerrancy or form criticism.  They may be completely uninformed about the Jesus seminar and reactions to it. They are outside the camp of institutional religion, but not outside the reach of Jesus.  They are simply readers without rubrics, responding to the text as it is given to them and they are as disparate a group as Reynolds Price, the novelist, Leon Kass, the bio-ethicist at University of Chicago and Layzie Bone, the rapper.

The Price of Admission
I’m telling you, the best introduction to the gospels I’ve ever read is by Reynolds Price in his Three Gospels. Rice, so far as I know, doesn’t attend any church or claim to be an “orthodox Christian.” 

He is one of America’s most accomplished novelists.  This is a man who has approached the gospels as a bare naked book.  He has apparently paid the price of admission that every person of letters knows is required to see what a story has to deliver: the willing suspension of disbelief.  He describes in his introduction a visionary experience of Jesus whereby he, Reynolds Price, was healed of, or was given extraordinary grace to bear–it’s not clear–the residual pain of spinal cancer.

The Beginning of Wisdom
Leon Kass, is a bio-ethicist at the University of Chicago.  He has written what I am finding to be the most inspired and insightful reading of Genesis I’ve ever encountered, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis. This book begins with his words: “How does a man of medicine and science, raised in a strictly secular home without contact with Scripture, come to write a book about the Bible?….It was all because of Darwin.”

Last but not least, Lee Cantelon, and friends, and the Words Project.  Lee is a Jesus lover.  He compiled the words of Jesus of Nazareth into a book to make his words available to those without any religious commitments, per se. People that Lee knew as friends in his industry.  People who wouldn’t go to church and might not be welcome if they did.  He gave his manuscript to some of his friends and asked them to respond with songs if they were so moved. They were so moved.

Jones & Bone
Rickie Lee Jones burst out with a CD called Sermon on Exposition Boulevard.  Oh, man, listen to this.  This is a woman who, like Mary Magdalene, brought her brokenness to the doorstep of Jesus where she heard his words.  Her music echoes what she heard there.  Haunting, evocative, brutally honest, daringly beautiful songs.

The biggest names in rap are lining up to read the words and sing what the words evoke in them.  Funny thing is, I don’t know who these guys are because I’m a music idiot.  Ask someone who is not a music idiot, though to tell you about Layzie Bone (Bone Thugs n-Harmony) , for starters.  Who wrote and recorded The Blessings after reading the Beatitudes of Jesus.

Other artists in the project include Umar Bin Hassan and Abiodun, founding members of The Last Poets, recoding, Is He the Living God? in response to the words. The bare naked words, that is.

Power of the Bare Naked Words
What happens when people outside the camp read the bare naked words? They come into contact with something or someone.  That is, if they know how to pay the price of admission for any words.  To enter them and see what they have to offer.  These word merchants know that all it takes is the willing suspension of disbelief.  It doesn’t mater what they believe about the Bible to be, per se.  They don’t hold or care about holding the doctrines of the bible defenders or the doctrines of the bible debunkers.  They just know how to listen to a song, or watch a movie, or read a book.

They know what these things demand to yield what they’ve got: the willing suspension of disbelief. What you do every time you plunk yourself in front of the TV to watch CSI.  You don’t say to yourself, “The lighting in these forensic labs isn’t as dark as they show it!”  You don’t say, “Man, the flirting that goes on here would be sexual harassment in my office!”  No, you need a break from the story you’ve been telling yourself all day.  And you want to hear from someone else for a change.

Maybe we should learn a thing or two about the power of the bare naked words from the people taking in the bare naked words outside the camp.

- Ken Wilson

Visit Ken Wilson's site at the Vineyard in Ann Arbor, Michigan.