Starbucks -- to display your Bible or not?

In romantic relationships, there's an ongoing debate about how much PDA is okay. What's PDA? "Public Display of Affection." How much hugging, kissing, handholding, and so on is allowable in public? 

Today I noticed that I have an inner debate about PDB while I'm in Starbucks. What's PDB? "Public Display of Bible." If you're doing Bible study in Starbucks, how much PDB is appropriate? 

I work at coffee shops at least a couple of times a week, and often I am preparing my sermon for the weekend. Oddly enough, when I do Bible study like this, I feel mildly conflicted about putting my Bible out on the table. I often use BibleGateway.com anyway, so Bible display not an issue. But today I had to acknowledge to myself (and to God) that PDB is an issue in my conscious mind. 

I don't like to be too showy about public display of religious equipment, as if displaying my Bible might make make it look like I feel holier than other people in Starbucks. Also, I always want to be ready for the random conversation, and I feel like people who otherwise might talk to me will run away when they see my 2375-page, two-tone brown leather Life Application Study Bible sitting beside me.

On the other hand, I feel like everything I just wrote in that preceding paragraph is just a nicely packaged bottle of weaksauce. Why in the world would I not want to display my Bible if I am using it? Am I hiding my own embarrassment behind a smokescreen of false concern about alienating people? And regarding random conversations, sometimes the presence of a Bible might spark a conversation rather than shut one down. 

Still, you can go too far with showy displays of religious enthusiasm. But where is that line?

So there it is -- the PDB debate. Maybe it's about Starbucks etiquette. Or maybe it's really about choosing not to be "ashamed of the gospel."

Comments

  1. David BeckOctober 17, 2011 at 8:53 AM

    This comment was posted on Facebook by my friend Jeremy, who is doing missions work in Haiti. I'm re-posting it here with his permission because I love the story...

    I miss going to Starbucks, setting my bible on the table and opening my computer that has a persecuted church sticker on it, it's interesting and someone always asked about it, and then it's on, once I had a circle of the entire Starbucks, about 10 people in Texas, and only two of us were Christian, my quick coffee break from driving lasted 4 hours, and when I left they had a lot of confusion about Christians cleared, and they had the name of a local church from the other brother that was there, I love how God gives us help when we need it.

    Loving Jesus always Dave, Jeremy

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Ten essential Dallas Willard quotes

Image
This week the church has lost a great saint and a shining light. Dallas Willard succumbed to cancer. As John Ortberg says in a wonderfully written tribute , Willard was brilliant, but "his heart and his life were better than his mind." I thought it would be appropriate to bring out ten quotes that do a pretty good job of getting at what Willard spent his life teaching and working on. 1. This quote states the central problem Willard spent his career working on: "My hope is to gain a fresh hearing for Jesus, especially among those who believe they already understand him. In his case, quite frankly, presumed familiarity has led to unfamiliarity, unfamiliarity has led to contempt, and contempt has led to profound ignorance." (opening paragraph of  The Divine  Conspiracy ) 2. The central problem, restated: "The governing assumption today, among professing Christians, is that we can be 'Christians' forever and never become disciples." ( The Gre
Read more

Why I have no hope of going to heaven

Image
I have little hope of going to heaven. In fact, I don't even want to go to heaven. Why? Because if we mean by "heaven" the final destination for God's people, then heaven isn't somewhere we go at all. Heaven isn't up in the sky. Heaven is here. When we say "heaven," most people think it's the place you go when you die. You are with God and his people, and you live forever in eternal bliss. The trouble is, that's a half-truth. It's not the biblical hope. Imagine it like this. Say you are living in a house that has been your beloved home for a long time, but it has fallen into disrepair. The plumbing is bad, the roof leaks and the house is infested with termites. You have painted the walls, and you even bought new kitchen appliances. You love the house, but it needs extensive work. Now through the generosity of a rich relative, you suddenly come into an inheritance huge enough that you can have your beloved house completely remod
Read more

Backpacking at the Dinkey Lakes

Image
I just returned from a backpacking trip in the high Sierras with my dad and oldest son. We packed in an area near Fresno called the Dinkey Lakes Wilderness. Yes, the lakes were dinky, as in small. Most natural alpine lakes are. But the place is really named for a small dog named Dinkey who protected his master by attacking a charging grizzly bear, giving the man time enough to grap a rifle and kill the bear. Dinkey lost his life for his act of heroism, but he was such an inspiration that an entire Sierra wilderness was named after him. Anyway, we visited eight lakes, each of them stunningly beautiful in its own right. The visit was everything we could have hoped. We shared adventure, exploring places we had never been. We fished -- successfully. We swam and goofed off. We enjoyed each other's company. There is nothing like three generations of a family getting large chunks of uninterrupted time together. The bonds between all three of us were strengthened, and for that we are deepl
Read more

A test of your relationship with God

Do you have the kind of relationship with God that is like a married couple, including fights and spats? That’s the biblical, Jewish picture of a person who really knows God.  At a certain point in life when I was dealing with some major disappointments, I came to the conclusion that it would be better to yell all my frustrations at God than go through a separation and live apart from him. That’s why I love this quote from Lois Tverberg and her quote of Peter Kreeft so much. Trust me, you’ll want to read to the bottom of this discussion of Job.  “Job’s friends were making the mistake that Western Christians do today when we don’t have a Hebraic understanding of the ‘knowledge of God’—da’at Elohim. A Westerner opens the Bible and wants to prove God’s existence and construct a theology to explain God’s nature. We would call that ‘knowledge of God.’ But in Hebrew, to ‘know’ someone was to be familiar with him through experience and relationship, as a wife knows her husband... “While Job’s
Read more

Sympathy for the mocking Roman soldiers

Image
Some time in the morning hours of Good Friday, Jesus was handed over to the Roman Praetorian guard before being led away to be crucified. It was a gruesome scene. Jesus had already been flogged within an inch of his life, and now the whole company of soldiers gathered around to mock and beat him. (Incidentally, historians report that this kind of treatment was not unique to Jesus. Others were mocked in similar ways.) The soldiers mocked Jesus for being a false -- and in their eyes, laughably pathetic -- king. Jesus stirred up this kind of trouble when he rode into town on Palm Sunday in a fashion that mimicked and symbolized both King Solomon and King David. New Testament scholar Craig Evans writes, Such an event suggested in unmistakable terms that Israel's king was Jesus, not Caesar. Thus, from the very moment of entry into Jerusalem, Jesus was set on a collision course with Roman authority. ( The Last Days of Jesus , p. 6)  Evans also points out that many of the soldiers&
Read more