By the time the Bible gets to Phoenix

"If loving God was a crime, I'd be an outlaw." Big Tent Revival


Maybe you saw the story. Most media outlets didn't do a thing, though the outlandishness of the story should have made blogs, websites, televised news, and what's that other thing, that out-dated thing? Oh, yeah, it should have made newspapers.


Recapping: A man in Phoenix (is there anything not controversial go on in Arizona these days?) who held weekly Bible studies at his home was arrested for having religious gatherings  that were against the city's building code.


Michael Salman was sentenced to two months in jail and more than $12,000 in fines. Salman, obviously upset by such goings on told a local Fox News radio station, "They're cracking down on religious activities and religious use. They're attacking what I as a Christian do in the privacy of my home."


Of course, Phoenix officials saw it differently. "Any time you are holding a gathering of people continuously, as he does -- we have concerns about people being able to exit the facility properly in case there is a fire," said Vicki Hill, Phoenix's chief assistant city prosecutor. "It came down to zoning and proper permitting."


Well, where to begin? This is just too easy, frankly, even for someone with limited ability to find sarcasm when one needs it.


The story goes on to say this battle has been ongoing since 2007. The Bible Study began with 15 persons. It has grown, the story says, to ALMOST 20. Color me surprised and beat me in the back yard with sugar cane I'm so excited. Twenty. In a building Salman constructed of almost 2,000 square feet in his back yard. Did I mention that it was 20 persons? Twenty committed Bible studying folk in a desert. Sounds like early Damascus. That ol' patriarch of the faith, Saul, can tell you about trying to put a stop to home studies in towns like Damascus. You have to be careful or you'll get knocked plumb off your high horse trying to stop those things.


Now, Salman should have done all he needed to do to conform to city rules and regs. That should have been no problem. Didn't a wise man once say that we are to give to Caesar what is Caesar's zoning law and code information? Something like that, I believe. We Christians always should be law keepers not law givers, someone else wrote in that Bible Salman and his folks were studying.


But, well, come on. At one point in this battle over a Bible study, a dozen cops raided the place. Wasn't there some illegal aliens to roust or something that night?


I can't begin to imagine the trouble Salman would have had during the summer if he had threatened to have a Vacation Bible Study. Strip searches for Bible game awards. Billy clubs for craft participants. Water boarding instead of water slides.


Where will it all end? It's a slippery slope toward anarchy if we are to allow Bible studies to go on in homes. Don't believe me, look what happened in Ephesus, or Phillipi, or even Rome itself. One day this little guy named Paul came rambling through, taking beatings and such for his trouble, and the next day something called a church was established in somebody's home. From there, it was a few hundred years till the glory of the pagan Roman empire was nada. The whole dang thing was turned into a Christian nation.


So, you see how serious this is, these home studies of the Bible? Phoenix, in all probability, has established a task force on how to deal with such.


You know what they say ... by the time the Bible gets to Phoenix, someone will probably open it. Wished that were true everywhere.


"I would join the fight; they could not shut me down.  I would stand tall for what I know is right. Would you stand with me, for the world to see, when all is on the line? Would you be ashamed of Jesus' name, if loving God was a crime?" Big Tent Revival