Next Sunday I’m teaching my son’s Sunday School class at our church. A couple of days ago, he sent me the teacher’s lesson book for these young couples. The subject is “living by a higher standard than the unbelieving world” and the text is Leviticus chapters 17-22.

Yesterday I started reading those chapters and began smiling. Oh, these chapters and I are old friends. Good friends even.

There is a story here, one I gladly tell.

It’s a story of persistent, nagging doubt and how God is able to use that doubt to do something extraordinary in the life of the believer who will stay in class.

So, yesterday, after reading the passage from Leviticus, I decided to do something I’ve not done in 45 years. I went back and re-read the 1927 Sinclair Lewis novel “Elmer Gantry.” I found it online by typing in “text of Elmer Gantry.” In this world of technological wonders, as a child of 1940, I am constantly being amazed at what’s available through the computer. But there it was, the entire book.

I was looking for one specific quote, something Sinclair Lewis has a renegade preacher tell another but which, I wager, was Lewis voicing his own doubts about the Christian faith. Preachers and veteran teachers know what this means when I say that I have quoted this from “Elmer Gantry” all through the years but in time I was quoting my quoting. Eventually one forgets the original text and cites what he remembers he said the last time.

I decided it was about time to go back and see if I’d gotten it right, see what the preacher had actually said. I’m no longer the 25-year-old I was when I first came up against that book and the movie it spawned. It could be I’ll see those words differently from the way they hit me as a seminary student.

First, a side note about the movie. Far more of this generation have seen the Burt Lancaster movie “Elmer Gantry,” made in 1960, than have read the book. The problem is, the book is like a 6 hour movie, whereas the movie was necessarily much briefer. The movie covers only about 100 pages of the book.

I recommend the book to every preacher I know. It’s painful reading, I grant you. However, in many ways, Sinclair Lewis knew what he was talking about. The charlatan who was Elmer Gantry–the one in the novel is far worse than the on-screen version played by Burt Lancaster–exposes the charlatanishness in each of us who would deign to speak for God and lead His flock.

In order to convey the full impact of the renegade preacher’s words, I’ll need to quote a long passage from the book.

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Calling the previous article and this one on the Epistle of Jude a “study” would be overstating the case, no doubt. Probably a “treatment” is more like it. Once or twice over lightly.

Those who love the Word will identify with what happened to me. After penning the previous article on Jude, I found that it lingered with me. Several statements in particular would not let me sleep last night. They kept insistig that they deserve more than the light reference we gave them previously.

Let’s call this: 5 statements that describe this faith of ours, from Jude’s epistle.

1) Ours is a revealed faith. (Jude 3)

“…the faith which was once for all entrusted to the saints.”

We did not “get up” this body of beliefs. We did not concoct it, think it up, work it up, knock it together using church councils or schools of prophets. It was given us by the Almighty.

Unless we settle this up front, nothing that follows will make any sense.

In their attack on the Christian faith, some will think they have found the fatal flaw when they point out that “your Bible was written by men; you Christians seem to think it was dropped from Heaven as a finished product.”

No one believes that. We cite the Apostle Peter when he says, “Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (II Peter 1:21).

God used human instrumentation. Scriptures are saturated with the fingerprints of its human authors, and far from denying it, we revel in it. We treasure the “warts and all” character of the Bible and the personal references from those used by God to pen it. “I Paul write this greeting in my own hand” (I Corinthians 16:21). “Do your best to get here before winter” (II Timothy 4:21).

2) Ours is a finished faith; it is completed (Jude 3).

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Wellington, a local pastor friend, and I were having lunch recently. As I’m wont to do, I asked what he was preaching the following Sunday.

“Jude,” he said, “and it’s worrying me to death!”

I laughed. “Why?”

He said, “I’m doing a series through some of the shortest–and most overlooked–books of the Bible. I’ve done Philemon and II and III John, and so, locked myself in to do Jude this Sunday. I’m really having trouble finding a hold on it.”

Since I had not read Jude lately, my memory of what that book-of-one-chapter contained was fuzzy, so I had little assistance to offer him. What I said was, “Well, don’t try to cover everything in it. As I recall, Jude quotes from the Apocrypha.”

Wellington said, “That’s what’s got me. I don’t know what to do with that.”

The Apocrypha is the name given to the books between the Old Testament and the New Testament. What’s that? There aren’t any? Maybe not in your Bible, but your Catholic friends’ Bible has them.

Protestants do not consider these little writings as authoritative primarily because the Jews didn’t either.

In vs. 9, Jude pulls an illustraton from a small book titled “The Assumption of Moses.” Then, in vs. 14 he does the same from the apocryphal book of I Enoch.

Now, referring to these books is not the same as endorsing them. Clearly, the Christian community almost from the first has been in agreement that these do not belong in the New Testament.

I said, “When I get back to the office, I’ll read through Jude and let you know if I have anything worth sharing.”

A half-hour later, two things happened. One, I e-mailed him my take on Jude. And a few minutes after that, another pastor, Millington, and I were visiting in my office. He said to me, “I spoke at a Bible study luncheon today. Guess what I spoke on–Jude!”

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10. Make your own bucket list.

What would you like to have done before departing this earthly scene for heavenly realms? Build a plane? Jump out of a plane? Fly a plane as the pilot? Or just take a ride on a plane? Put it on your list.

We’re all so different, no two people’s bucket list will be alike. Some years back, I would have put toward the top of my list to attend the annual meeting of the National Cartoonists Society. These men and women are the heroes, so to speak, of this cartooning business, the best there are, and some are household names in America. I own original cartoons from many of them, drawings they did for their newspaper strips which are now signed, framed, and (mostly) displayed on the walls of my home. In the study where I’m working at this moment, 13 original cartoons are staring down upon me.

I’m past the groupie stage of cartooning, for the most part, so that would no longer be on my list. So, lists vary and they have a way of changing.

Make your own list.

9. Postpone your bucket-kicking event.

I’m not one who believes a day was calendared for your death the moment you arrived on the planet. There seems to be a lot of it’s-your-call involved in how long we live and when we die, based on how we take care of ourselves and the risks we take.

To postpone the time of our departure simply means to do a few basic things that should increase the length of our lives:

–eat better. More fresh fruits and veggies, and fewer fries and chips and empty calory-type foods such as cola drinks.

–exercise more. Take walks, do stretching routines, buy some small weights from Wal-Mart or an athletic store and tone up your flesh.

–have a full checkup with your doctor. You’ll have to take the initiative with this. If you call your doctor’s office and say, “I want a checkup,” unless he/she knows you, what you’ll get will be fairly worthless. Tell the doctor’s nurse you want a) a complete head-to-toe examination, b) blood work, and c) a colonoscopy (if you are 50 or older). If you are female and have not had mammograms as recommended, schedule one of those too.

–ask your doctor or a nutritionist to tell you what vitamins to take each day. In the 1990s, my primary care physician at Ochsner’s Foundation Hospital in New Orleans put me on a regimen of vitamins and a baby aspirin each day. She said, “Mr. McKeever, I think we have just prevented a heart attack in you.”

–lose some weight. Quit smoking. Laugh more. Get up off the couch, turn off the television (or computer!), and get outside. Go to the park with your children or grandchildren. Toss a frisbee or football. Laugh some more. Enjoy a snow-cone in some weird flavor (they’re called snowballs around here).

8. Widen yourself.

For one year, try this: each week visit your local library and spend a minimum of one hour in the periodicals section. This is the sitting area with tables and chairs and with magazines on display. Take down several magazines you have never heard of and flip through them. Read anything that attracts your attention.

If you are a preacher or teacher, always have a notepad handy. I guarantee you are going to run into fascinating articles with information you’ll want to remember. And think what fun it will be when you stand before your group and say, “The other day, I was reading an article in Rolling Stone magazine….” Or, Electronics Monthly. Or, Archaeology in Zimbabwe.

You may discover a new career this way. (It’s been done, believe me.) And if nothing else, you’ll broaden your scope.

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