Learning About Jesus With Jed and Jethro

A report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.  This week’s item is from ReporterNews.com. March 4, 2001, with a headline: “Jed and Jesus Paired in Beverly Hillbillies Bible Lessons.”  One day Jesus sat beside a cement pond and told the parable of the Beverly Hillbilly.  Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed.  Poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed.  And then one day he was shooting at some food and up through the ground come a bubbling crude, oil that is, black gold, Texas tea.  Okay, put down your Bibles, that story isn’t in the gospels.  It is in the new Beverly Hillbillies Bible Study, based on episodes of the popular 1960’s television show.  Bible study can be fascinating, exhilarating, life changing.  It can also be as dull and tedious as the first chapter of the book of Numbers.  So, who says Bible study shouldn’t be fruitful and fun.  Who says you can’t laugh and learn at the same time?  Not Steve Skelton of the Entertainment Ministry in Nashville, Tennessee.  He wrote the Beverly Hillbillies Bible Study.  Before that he co-wrote the Andy Griffith Show Bible Study.  “The Beverly Hillbillies is sort of a silly comedy, but it’s also a show about a simple family that stays true to their values in a world obsessed with money,” Skelton said.  In the Hillbilly study, participants watch an episode of the show and then discuss its biblical theme.  “Using these episodes as parables is entertaining and morally instructive,” Skelton said.  “Just about every episode is built on a simple moral principle, like cheating is wrong, honesty is good, it’s not right to judge people.”  Lesson one is based on the show’s first episode.  Jed Clampet, the poor mountaineer, sells what he figures is a useless oil-filled swamp for twenty-five million dollars.  Reluctantly, he moves his family from their hillbilly shack to a Beverly Hills mansion.  The theme is blessings.  To most people in the world, being blessed means living the good life, accomplishing goals and acquiring wealth, Skelton wrote in the study guide.  But, as measured by God, being blessed first involves faithfulness.  Participants discuss such things and respond to such questions as: did the money change the Clampets? and When is wealth a blessing?  This isn’t the first time pop culture has popped up in Bible study.  Creative Sunday school teachers use cartoons, movies, hit songs, television shows and even newspaper columns to spice up the traditional word and workbook curriculum.  Publishers offer everything from The Parables of Peanuts by Robert L. Short, to The Gospel According to the Simpsons by Mark Penske.  The intent is to make Bible study and Sunday school more fun and more relevant.  The danger, of course, comes in trying to make the Bible fit the culture.

T. A. McMahon:

And I think there is a danger here.  Certainly, on the one hand we could say, whatever encourages people to get into a dialogue about to study the Word, to get together with people to discuss what God’s Word says, we’d that would be good, but why do we need entertainment as something to attract us?

Dave Hunt:

Well, first of all Tom, where is the Bible in this?  They are getting their lessons from Beverly Hillbillies or the Andy Griffith Show or whatever.

T. A. McMahon:

Well, they may see a segment and they see what’s going on and then they see how truths, so-called, are presented, virtues and so on.

Dave Hunt:

I don’t see anywhere in this article, I didn’t hear anywhere in this article, about going then, to the Bible to see what the Bible says.  We are getting our lessons from fiction and from cartoons and he goes on and mentions television show and so on.  Wait a minute!  It’s the Word of God that we are to feed upon.  It is the Word of God by which we are born again through the Spirit of God into the family of God, as Peter very clearly tells us.  So, it sounds to me like this is just moralisms—well, lets learn some moral lessons.  Well, you could learn moral lessons from Buddhism, even from Hinduism, some aspects of Hinduism.  You could learn moral lessons from atheists; they even claim that they can have morals without God and without Christ.  Where do we find in here the truth and why not go directly to the truth.  In other words, the implication is that Paul would have done a whole lot better job if he had just had some cartoons and the Beverly Hillbillies shows and so forth to help Him out—wouldn’t that improve the Bible wonderfully?  Now, Jesus did use parables, he gave illustrative examples to illustrate truth but I don’t see that this is illustrating biblical truth; they are not even turning us to the Bible.  You have to start with the Bible first, Tom and then give some examples.

T. A. McMahon:

Dave, as I look at this article, I mean, this individual who is doing this, he has a ministry, it is called The Entertainment Ministry.  He also wrote the Andy Griffith Show Bible Study so he is setting up a Bible study using these visual aids, as it were, to encourage you to get into the Bible.  Now, I take a little different view on this.  I don’t get how entertainment, how that fits with studying God’s Word.  If you are drawn to something because of its entertainment value, then where do you draw the line?  Well, that verse wasn’t very entertaining, let’s go to a more entertaining, I mean, it puts you into that mind set and Dave, it isn’t just this that I am concerned about.  We seem to see this mentality in the church whether you call yourself a seeker friendly, let’s put on a show.  Let’s put on this, let’s do a production to draw people in.  Well, isn’t the axiom true that what draws them in keeps them in?  So then, don’t you have to keep upping the ante?

Dave Hunt:

Tom, it is demeaning to the Bible.  What it says is, God’s Word is inferior, or it’s saying, things are different today.  If you are going to say that people are different today because they have television, they have automobiles and we fly in airplanes and so forth, that is all superficial it has nothing to do with the heart; the heart of man has not changed.  Human beings are still the same in their hearts.  We still need truth, we still need the redemptive work of Christ on the cross and there is no better way to explain it than the Bible.  This whole idea is the Bible isn’t good enough, the Bible is boring, and the Bible doesn’t communicate.  Now, let’s get something—in the process you lose the very truth of the Bible that you were going to communicate.

T. A. McMahon:

I’m not saying of this individual that his heart isn’t right but I think he ought to check his approach, his methodology.  I think it is going to come up away short of what he really wants, if indeed, he does.