Toward a Biblical Theology of Show and Tell | An Introduction

Raise your hand if you remember show and tell time in elementary school.  Bring back any memories?  That was another time and another place wasn’t it?  And for some of you I know that time and place are a lot farther away than they are for others of us.  (My use of the first person plural there is a feeble attempt at identifying myself as younger-ish.)  But take just a minute and try to recall one thing you brought to show and tell.  Why was it special or unique?  Where did you get it from?  What memories are attached to it now?

I am sure you never brought anything as dorky as a sticker book to show and tell…but I did.  And I was pretty proud of that sticker book.  I must have had a hundred or more stickers in it.  I had all the usuals:  the scratch ‘n sniff ones, the fuzzy touch ones, the lenticular ones (they look like they move when you change the viewing angle).  But my favorites, the ones I especially remember showing and telling, were the puffy ones…and one puffy one in particular actually.  It was big.  It took up half of a page.  It was He-man; rippled with muscles, fully decked out in those brown furry shorts, steel belts across his chest, and battle sword raised in the air.  I remember strutting across the front of the class thrusting the open page toward my classmates making sure everyone got a good look.  I remember talking it up like it was the next best thing to…well, whatever the best thing was back then.  Yup, that was a “puffed chest” moment for me.

Then, right after me, along came Katie…with her sticker book.  Hers made mine look like a church bulletin (you draw your own parallel there).  Hers was thick, like a scrapbook.  She must have had a thousand or more stickers in it.  She had all the same ones as me and more, save the puffy He-man sticker.  But even my He-man sticker paled in comparison to some of her big puffy ones.  I sunk a bit lower in seat every time Katie turned a page.  My classmate’s ooo’ed and ahhh’ed.  They probably even clapped when she was done.  I’d been showed ‘n told up.  But at least I showed AND told.

Surely you remember the kids that stood up on show and tell day with nothing but a story to tell about their sports card collection that was just too big and valuable to bring to class or their Dad who raced hot rods or their Grandpa who knew Christopher Columbus, but they never produced evidence to back it up; they never showed anything?  Or the kids that stood up with a pair of shoes or a pillow or a framed picture, but proceeded to just stand there staring at their shoes looking like they had to go pee; they never told anything?  Thinking back now, it just didn’t feel right.  The kid who was all tell and no show…it seemed a bit arrogant, yeah?  I mean really, a Dad who raced hot rods or a Grandpa who knew Columbus; it just lacks credibility.  And the kid who was all show and no tell...where’s the punch?  You gotta give me something that at least tells me why you’re holding a pair of shoes or a pillow!  What does it mean to you?  What is it suppose to mean to us?

It seems to me now, that for show and tell time to really be effective; to really do what it is meant to do, to wow your classmates with a little piece of your life, you have to have both the show and the tell.  Without the show, can I receive it?  Without the tell, can I believe it?  Like the gospel; the good news of the Kingdom of God…of Jesus Christ.

I have been ruminating on this idea for a few months now.  Growing up I understood the gospel of Jesus Christ to be primarily a message that is told.  My Grandpa Weeda trusted Jesus after hearing the gospel told at a Billy Graham crusade event.  My Dad trusted Jesus after hearing the gospel told from a Bible tract.  I trusted Jesus after hearing the gospel told in a little booth at the fair and again by my Dad in the garden and again at multiple youth retreats and again by a truck driver.  And I am certain that each instance was effectual in drawing me to Jesus.

But for all the times the gospel was told to me, I wonder if there wasn’t some gospel shown to me as well that was equally as effectual.  I wonder if, at the end of it all, I was actually drawn to Jesus through the gospel being both shown and told to me.  I guess I wonder if, each time I encountered the gospel message growing up, I actually encountered both something to see and actually receive as well as something to hear and believe in.

“Toward a Biblical Theology of Show and Tell” will be a series of posts.  The above is not all there is.  That was merely an introduction.  I’m still gathering up my thoughts and mediations.  By “gather” I mean my thoughts on this sometimes seem a bit like a stack of papers sitting on the sill of an open window on a windy day.  None-the-less, I hope you’ll follow along with me, even converse with me, as I reflect on Bible passages, mostly from the New Testament, that seem to me to suggest that the gospel is really something to show and tell.