THE POTATO AND THE BIBLE
W Carl Ketcherside

The potato is pretty much a staple part of our diet in these days. With the proliferation of steak houses across the land we can drive in and gulp down a baked Idaho and a salad of our own construction and be on our way in twenty minutes. It was not always that easy. The potato, which is indigenous to the Peruvian Andes was brought to Europe in the sixteenth century. It created a sensation and was denounced from the pulpits of the land as a snare of Satan. Eminent divines argued that if God had meant for His people to eat potatoes he would have mentioned them somewhere within the pages of Holy Writ. In the absence of any such scriptural reference they were condemned by the silence of the scriptures.

This true account illustrates graphically the length to which men may go who make such a negative creed out of silence, and who argue that what God has not said is as authoritative as what He has said. It is one of the myths of the restoration movement which has managed to wield it so effectively that it has ended up with two dozen or more sects, each belaboring all the others as unfaithful and heretical. This points up the danger of adopting slogans as guidelines and substitutes for the revelation of God.

From the time I cut my eye-teeth on “restoration theology” I have been belabored with “We speak where the Bible speaks, and remain silent where it is silent.” I am prepared to prove that we have been wrong on both counts, but right now I want to deal with the last one. It is part and parcel of the baggage we have lugged along on our journey through life without ever stopping long enough to see what was in our spiritual carpetbag. It is so vital to our existence as a separatist and exclusivist people that to call it in question is looked at in the same light as hurling a bomb at the New Jerusalem. I have been reproached with the plea, “Why don’t you keep still and let well enough alone?” This comes with poor grace from those who are notorious for gunning down everyone who disagrees with them. It is like a bully who terrorizes everyone in his path with threats and then cringes and whimpers when the police track him down and surround him.

We have repeatedly heard sermons and read articles on “the authority of silence.” In my earlier and younger days, before I knew better, I preached a few of them myself. I am ashamed of having done so and have asked God to forgive me. I now realize that there is no inherent authority in silence. There is no fixed, innate, or existent authority in what has not been said or spoken. I shall deal soon with the false concept that it is the authority of God which invests silence, but right now let me say that the only authority which adheres to it, is the authority of the one who makes the argument. It is impossible to interpret silence, for nothing has been said which has become possible of putting into intelligible or familiar words.

This brings me to the problem of remaining silent where the Bible is silent. I will not examine the validity of the slogan for human beings, whose minds are already filled with pre-conceived notions, prejudices and acquired ideas. It may be that the whole slogan represents a goal toward which we aspire, something to keep constantly before us. The view that we have attained it and are now practicing it is a myth which renders our work ineffective, especially when we postulate that we are the only believers on earth who are attempting to do so. We have arrived just as everyone else is departing!

We did not come to the faith with our minds in a vacuum. Thousands of impressions, some right, some wrong, have influenced our thinking. When we accept Jesus as Lord we do not turn our minds back to zero. We begin where we are, absorbing new and refreshing ideas, correcting and forsaking mistaken ones. Some among us are so-called original thinkers, others would not recognize an original thought if it sat up and barked in their faces. But we are all the children of God and there is room under the divine umbrella for us all. We must receive one another and not seek to manipulate each other.

The fact is we do not remain silent where God is silent. We talk too much. We deliver sermons, write books, engage in debates, become angry, form factions, and slice the body to shreds over what God meant when He did not say anything. What we do is fill in the blanks and try to get everyone else to fill them in just as we do. We supply the missing words. We do not remain silent. We remain talkative. What we really mean is that everyone else should remain silent where the Bible is silent, and not interrupt us while speaking where it has not spoken. Our problem is not so much thinking to pray as praying to think. We are driving people from us whom God loves. As fast as He calls them we cull them.

The slogan has become a mere debating tool. Like so many other catchwords it was devised or twisted to win battles. And all is fair in love and war. The word “slogan” is from the Gaelic. It referred originally to the war cry of a Highland clan. Anyone who has heard it knows how blood-curdling it can be. It will give you goose pimples as big as little marbles. It will make your flesh crawl and creep. And our adoption of the slogan was intended to frighten members of the Christian Churches or the Baptist Church until they would climb the nearest tree when they saw us approaching.

I doubt that the genial and affectionate Thomas Campbell realized, when he used the slogan that the time would come when two dozen warring tribes would adopt it as their guide and ride forth to scalp each other with this rusty blade or bash in skulls with this tomahawk. Certainly he did not intend to use it as we have. To do so would have rendered his writing unnecessary. We have more sects than when he lived, and we have added a couple of dozen of our own, just to complicate matters a little further.

It cannot be denied that the use we make of silence is a very selective one. We preach it as though it were a God-given, all-embracing principle. But in our application of it we tread water like a shipwrecked sailor. If one mentions greeting the saints with a holy kiss we quickly label it as a custom geared to the culture. It is all right for Yasser Arafat on television but all wrong for us as Christians in the United States. The mere mention of foot washing gives us cold chills despite the words of Jesus that He gave us an example to do as He had done.

We are ready with a portfolio of arguments when someone points out that the scriptures are silent about the churches owning real estate. We have drummed up a series of reasonings which demonstrates it is right to do something for which we have neither command, necessary inference, or approved precedent. We have even developed huge financing organizations, great architectural firms, and church building complexes which will move in and erect a meetinghouse with the approved sign “Church of Christ” on it. But the word of God is absolutely mum about our huge temples of pride with their multiple rooms for this and that, including the preacher’s office. Times have changed. Once we inveighed against stained glass windows, steeples on our edifices, and crosses on our buildings. But that was when we were a frontier people, unwept, unhonored and unsung. Since we have become accepted socially, and can even elect a man to Congress, things have changed.

All of this points up the shallowness of our arguments. The contention for the silence of the scriptures is not a scriptural one. It is a myth to contend that it is. It is elastic enough to allow anything we want. It is restrictive enough to forbid anything we oppose. It is like a fence which keeps cattle in and allows hogs to go out. The content of the silence is dictated by the wish of the contender. David Lipscomb thought it was a sin to vote. Now a lot of folk think it is a sin not to do so. —4420 Jamieson, Apt. 1C, St. Louis, MO 63109
 

 

When hearts yearn for each other with a deep and abiding affection, when brotherhood is conditioned upon common Fatherhood and fellowship is recognized as the result of mutual sons hip, unity will flow as a broad and tranquil stream whose crystal waters are furnished by the bubbling springs of thousands of quiet hearts.

Then we will not need to argue every action and every faction, but love will triumph over trouble and we shall grow together in the bundle of life with the souls of all brethren, and we shall be tied with the scarlet line that flowed from his lacerated side. This is unity of the Spirit! —W. Carl Ketcherside, The Twisted Scriptures, p. 60.