When I write a grocery list, it reads something like, “milk, eggs, ibuprof, peppers, apples, air freshener, spaghetti”.  Even if we were looking for the exact same items, my cousin’s list would read (and I’m not exaggerating!) “1 one half-gallon Hoody Carb-Smart 2% milk, one box one dozen Fred Meyer size AA large eggs, 1 bottle 100 count Kroger ibuprofen 200 milligram tablets, 1 medium green bell pepper, 1 medium orange bell pepper, 1 medium red bell pepper, 6 small red delicious apples, 1 spray can Febreze air freshener spring lavender scent purple and pink can, 1 one pound (16 ounce) bag American Beauty angel hair spaghetti.”  If I were doing her shopping for her, that kind of detail would make sense, but since I’m just the driver and she’s doing her own shopping and knows just what she’s looking for anyway, that kind of written detail seems unnecessary to me – especially since she insists on reading it word for word as soon as we get in the car and again once we reach the store.

Some people can’t seem to relate an anecdote without including every detail they can think of.  Even when you know none of the people involved in the story, the teller insists on stopping the story to recall whether it was Uncle Joe or Cousin Billy who said the cow got into the garden, or maybe it was the horse, and whether that was before or after Grandma (the one who lives in Hicktown, not the one in Boonysville) served the lemonade.  Or was it iced tea?  The storyteller may feel compelled to tell you if the subject of the story was tall, short, thin, fat, pretty, or whatever, what s/he did for a living, or where s/he came from – regardless of whether ANY of those characteristics have the slightest bearing on the story.  Sometimes by the time the storyteller has gotten through with all those irrelevant details, they’ve lost track of where they were going with the story in the first place.  Or you’ve ceased to care about it!

Sometimes worrying about too many details just gums up the gears.  Sometimes, though, it’s important to pay attention to them.

I’ve been thinking about details since a discussion in my Tuesday morning ladies’ Bible study.  Someone brought up the new series running on the History Channel.  Titled simply “The Bible”, it is but the latest attempt by Hollywood to dramatize Scripture.  Those who have seen the most episodes of the show maintain that the screenwriters have remained faithful to the “main message” of the story, and even to some Scriptural details, but all of us who have watched any of it can see that there are plenty of Scriptural details that have been ignored in the name of dramatic license.  For example, for the sacrifice of his son, Genesis states that Abraham took two young men and a donkey along with Isaac and journeyed until the third day.  In “The Bible”, one morning he just takes Isaac for a short climb up the mountain right outside where they happen to be camping – close enough that it shows Sarah climbing after them in a panic, having just discovered that no one had seen them that afternoon.   

Hollywood is not the only source of re-imagined Scripture, either.  Our church is currently going through a 32 week program using The Story, a chronologically arranged version of snippets of the NIV that covers the whole of the Bible.  The point of it is to better acquaint people with the sweep of God’s working in the history of His people as shown in Scripture, and to recognize His working in their own history.  Considering the deplorable lack of Biblical literacy today, especially as it relates to Biblical history, I think it a good – if not very in-depth – thing to do.  There is a series of short video clips intended for teens that is being shown to introduce each week’s lesson.   The artistry itself is fascinating, but the stories are often told in a way that plays fast and loose with the details of the Biblical narrative.  For example, Naomi tells Ruth to go sneak into Boaz’ bedroom, not onto his threshing floor. 

What makes me most uneasy is not just the changing of these details, though the doing so by a Christian company creating videos to be shown in churches is highly disturbing.  What is most disquieting to me is the attitude of most of the Christians with whom I have discussed the issue.  Their take?    As long as the TV show/movie/video/book gets “the main message” right, who cares if they change things to “dramatize” it?  Details don’t really matter.

I wonder if Moses consulted a screenwriter before that famous scene at the rock?  “Speak to the rock, strike the rock, what does it matter?  That’s just a detail.  Striking the rock will be SO much more dramatic!  What matters is that the people will get water out of the rock, right?”  That’s certainly the attitude of those who believe details of Scripture are unimportant.  Yet it was that seemingly unimportant little detail that kept Moses from entering the Promised Land.  Apparently, God DOES care about details.

2 Tim. 3:16 tells us that “All Scripture is God-breathed and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness… “.  Catch that word?  ALL.  Not “all but the details.”  Not just “the gist of it”.  He breathed ALL of Scripture; He wasn’t holding His breath on the details.  Details matter.  That difference in the detail between the Biblical narrative and the “The Bible” portrayal of the Abraham story?  If we cross reference Gen. 22:14 with 2 Chron. 3:1, we find that the mountain where Abraham offered his sacrifice, the mountain where we have the first account of a substitutionary sacrifice, was the mountain where Solomon centuries later would build his temple, where thousands upon thousands of substitutionary sacrifices would be offered until the final offering of the One Perfect Sacrifice, Christ Jesus.  You couldn’t get that from “The Bible” show.  Do we always understand why a particular detail is given?  No, but even if we don’t understand the significance of a detail, if God cared enough to put it in His Word, shouldn’t it matter? 

Where Scripture is silent, there is room for dramatic interpretation, so long as it is consistent with the rest of the Scriptural witness, and so long as one keeps very, very clear on what is actual Scripture versus what is simply extrapolation and imagination.  When it comes to what Scripture DOES tell, however, how can there be “wiggle room”?  What Scripture says, it says.  My concern is that the more we Christians let Scriptural details cease to matter, the easier it becomes to classify more of Scripture as mere “detail”.  If we let the principle be established that “only the main gist matters”, then what are we to stand on when someone else’s idea of a “detail” is, to us, of central importance?  Are we not eventually likely to end up faced with the relevancy and accuracy of Scripture itself called into question? 

If we take out details God cared enough to put IN, the Devil just might be in the ones we use to replace them.