Today I blew off work and went to see the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. I hooked up with my good friends Tos’ Fackenthall, Steve Pelluer, and Sherwood Korssjoen. They’re weirdoes that I met in Buena Vista, Colorado three years ago while hanging with John Eldredge of “Wild At Heart” fame at the Crooked Creek Ranch Young Life Camp. Sherwood looks like Richard Gere by hair with bigger eyes and sounder theology. He’s 60. I remember the moment I met him, he walked up to me and handed me a chrome-plated pocket knife with John 1:14 engraved on it, and said “Hi, I’m Sherwood. Two weeks ago Satan was on my front lawn, so I threw holy oil on my porch at 3am…” and that’s as far as I got into the story before I graciously accepted the knife and attempted to walk away. But I couldn’t. He kept talking and never came up for air. I had to listen. And while listening to his personal account of his tangible meeting with the actual Prince of Darkness and His minions, I found my mind wondering how he got this pocket knife on a 737 in a post-9/11 world? Why did he give it to me? Was there a sign on my forehead that said: “I need a psycho friend?”, does Gary Ridgeway have a brother? And that’s how I met Sherwood. Tos’ Fackenthall is just a great guy with a huge heart, huge hair, and is my only authentic Greek friend. I dig that about him. And Steve Pelluer, what can I say about Steve? He’s the former Dallas Cowboy quarter back and leader of the Pac-10 Championship Washington Huskies in the early 80s. He led the Cowboys in passing yardage and completion percentage from 1986-1989 until Troy Aikman came on the scene. Then he was traded to the Kansas City Chiefs. Screw Troy Aikman. So I and my three boys go raging into this huge exhibit, ripping on Venti Americanos, searching for some semblance of archeological validation and Judeo-Christian Apologetics for $23.75 each! We got it! While all four of us have crossed that line of full-fledged faith, where reason and logic stop, and God demands that you toss your proverbial chips and declare yourself “All In” for the reality game of ‘Texas Hold’em Life’ on this planet; we STILL wanted to see a 2,300 year old scroll of Deuteronomy. Our jaws dropped at the four foot, leather, papyrus chunk of Exodus that revealed the Ten Commandments. We sat through the :15 minute video describing the Jewish sect of the Essenes that lived in the Qumran caves (of which, John the Baptist, Christ’s crazy cousin, was a proud member!) and marveled at the fact that within all 21 copies of the 66 chapters of the Book of Isaiah there were only 22 grammatical and spelling errors from the version we have today! I don’t know if you’ve been watching Discovery or the History Channel lately; but that’s frickin’ amazing! You see, all of the secular, atheistic, academia-pussified scholars have claimed that the Holy Bible was duplicated over and over so many times that it lost its authenticity and was altered, stepped on, added to, and detracted from over the last 3,000 years; therefore, it can’t be real; therefore, we don’t believe it; therefore, eat, drink, be merry, and worship Chuck Darwin or Stephen Hawking. Wrong! Before this find, the nearest carbon radium dating held our oldest biblical copy back to the Middle Ages. This dig dug up scrolls that were over 1,000 years older than that! AND THEY’RE THE SAME! For those of you keeping score at home, that means what we’re looking at today in the New International Version is what Jesus, the Man Himself, and his founding forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were unrolling around the campfires deep in the land of Canaan, nearly 4,000 years ago. I’m still comprehending that….? So, two hours later Tos’ and Steve bailed because they’ve got real jobs, and Sherwood and I are unpacking this little quest across the courtyard at Starbucks. All the while, watching soccer moms chat on their BlackBerries and a homeless fella mumble to himself about the human finger he has wrapped in a sandwich baggie, Sherwood locks my gaze and says, “Corey, how’s your heart, brother?” Without batting an eyelash I told him: “It’s got 22 grammatical and spelling errors; but I’ll take it.” “Not bad.” He said. “Keep it up.”
