Holy Bible Labeled Fiction
Is the bible fiction? Is it literal? Did Moses really part the sea? Some people really think that the stories in the Bible are just that, fictional stories. However, some really worship the Bible as the word of God. When in doubt, if one is selling Bibles, neutrality must reign, lest you incur the wrath of the offended.
A major chain found that out the hard way. They got national publicity. In a country that is 78.4% Christian, that is a dangerous mistake. Chick-fil-a can make a social mistake if it has some doctrinal backing in Christianity (implied or otherwise). The converse is not true.
Costco labeled the Bible as fictional in a Simi Valley store. A pastor saw it.
Caleb Kaltenbach, pastor of Discovery Church, came across the Bibles while shopping for a gift and tweeted the picture on Friday with the comment: “Costco has Bibles for sale under the genre of FICTION Hmmmm…”
That didn’t sit well with members of his congregation.
“I was completely offended. It’s wrong, and I believe that the Bible is real,” Shellie Dungan told KTLA-TV.
Did the pastor go to Costco to get a response? Apparently he went directly to social media. He likely knew that he could rile up a significant portion of the Christian base to get notoriety. And he did.
For all the brouhaha, Kaltenbach said the discussions the label has sparked have been good for the faith community.
“It’s caused a lot of controversy, it’s caused a lot of conversation, which I think conversation is good,” he told KCBS-TV.
I find it ironic that the pastor would go after a company like Costco. Costco treats its employees in a humane fashion by paying them a living wage and ensuring they have good benefits. Walmart stiffs its employees and pays them substandard wages while simulating support for family values. If the pastor wanted to do a Christian-like thing one would think he would be shaming Walmart into “doing unto others as they want done unto their shareholders.”
Costco says the mislabeling was a mistake by its distributor that they should have caught. Sadly, anyone who analyses this event should come to the conclusion that this pastor did an ‘un-Christian-like’ thing. He forgot about compassion.
Had he gone directly to a Costco manager, he could have found out it was a simple mistake. By publicizing it as he did, he allowed the most carnal emotions to be unleashed on Costco. He may have hurt the bottom line of the company that will affect many of its employees. Worse, he may have irreparably left a bad mark on the store’s manager that will follow that manager for life; So much for forgiveness.
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Fiction! The truth will set you free…..http://www.rationalresponders.com/a_big_list_of_gods_but_nowhere_near_all_of_them
Moses, not Noah, supposedly parted the sea.
oops. You are so right.
I fully agree with Willies’ assessment of the situation. While I do not believe the Bible to be fiction (although it does contain stories, it is not wholly fiction), I do understand that people make mistakes. Perhaps to explain (do not read “to excuse”) what the pastor might have been thinking, I have run across apocryphal tales on some social media Q&A sites of Bibles being put in the fiction sections of libraries and bookstores; maybe this pastor had seen many of those and thought this store had mislabeled them on purpose. However, had he taken his complaint to the store manager personally, his complain would seem to have been quickly corrected. It is an unfortunate sign of our times that anyone would prefer to air this sort of thing on social media first. The pastor might have done well to remember this lesson from Matthew’s gospel (18:15): “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.”
The bible was not mislabeled. The pastor wanted to change the truthful label to fit his belief!
“Non-fiction” and “fiction” aren’t determined based on an individual’s (or a group’s) belief … those designations are a function of fact … no offense, but the bible IS fiction,