Back to the Future

What can I say? It was on sale. $12.99 at Costco for the trilogy. With a bonus disk. And we hadn't seen it in a million years (give or take). So I bought it, even thought it wasn't on the grocery list.

It's amazing how much the mind remembers over the years ... and how much the mind forgets. There's quite a bit of swearing in these movies, enough to make it uncomfortable to listen at times. How come I don't remember that from when the movies came out? We all went to the theater to see them when they came out. Were we that jaded at the time? Had media become so full of bad language back in the 80's that it didn't even register?

The movies are still amusing, but my brain is quite different than it was in those heady days of yesteryear. Instead of focusing on the romance and the science fiction and the humor, my mind picks up on the inconsistencies, the logical fallacies, the things that just don't make sense. It's difficult to enjoy it the same way we did a quarter-century ago. The kids think it's funny. Sometimes I wish I could sneak into their brains and experience it the same way they do.

The same thing happens every night during our Bible study. My brain is reading the words in the scriptures and filtering them through nearly fifty years of information and analysis, whereas their brains are still seeing it somewhat new and fresh. Whereas my attention is captured by subtle nuance of phrasing and intention, they are hearing it -- as teenagers -- as though for the first time. Perhaps this is due to the relative scarcity of in-depth Biblical analysis undertaken at the teen level. One does tend to hear the same stories over and over again. And one must take care not to overwhelm minds which are being inundated with fresh information (school, Internet, friends) every day, every hour. So we take what we can get out of it, and try not to push too hard.

But sometimes I wish that I could erase it all from my mind and start over, experiencing it for the very first time, to get past the phrases which have embedded themselves in my brain from years of reading and studying, to see them fresh and new and unobserved. I try. As we go through the Bible with the children every night, I hear it read with different voices, different intonation, different emphasis. And I try to find specific details which jump out at me, which demand explanation, and ask the children for their own interpretations. And we discuss these things.

I don't try to answer all the questions. My main goal is to stimulate an interest, plant a seed, posit a mystery which must be solved. Were I to try and answer all the questions, there would be no need for them to go back and re-read it again on their own. The hope is that enough of a mystery remains that they will be prompted to do a little investigation on their own. And truly see that the Bible is a living, breathing, active document.