CO-CHAIR THOUGHTS FROM DEAN DICKENS
Beyond Animal Instinct

In recent weeks, America felt good about Chicago’s favorite gorilla and her protective mothering instincts in caring for the young child who fell into the gorilla pen. I’m not so sure we couldn’t learn a little more from a Kenyan ostrich and a Wisconsin cow.

On the ostrich side, I read some time ago about the critter in Lamu, Kenya, that carried the “head-in-the-sand” routine a little too far. We know that they bury their heads thinking that if they cannot see anything, then predators cannot see them. Our ostrich friend in Kenya was so frightened that it actually corkscrewed its head and neck four feet into the ground. Fortunately, a local construction crew was able to successfully free it.

Meanwhile, in a similar vein, Wisconsin dairyman Ralph Swenson has a little problem with his Holstein cow. Cow Daisy loves to drink milk from the bottom of Ralph’s milk pails. Unfortunately, since she can’t get her tongue all the way to the bottom, she just forces her head further and further into the bucket until she is stuck. Since Daisy doesn’t navigate around the dairy too well with a bucket stuck over her head, Ralph says he routinely goes through the escape process several times each week.

One begins to wonder if we have become so accustomed to the bad attitudes and bad behavior of some of the fundamentalists that we find it easier to stick our heads into the sand, buckets, or whatever. We seem to have become accepting of brash behavior even after almost 20 years.

Is it not astounding that in our neighboring fundamentalist state Oklahoma, their state denominational newspaper refused to print an informational ad about their CBF meeting at the time of the annual state meeting? They refused to run an ad noting a CBF radio ministry but they were willing to advertise a Bible conference in a Colorado Springs Presbyterian Church!

In light of Texas Baptists being committed to representation by those with differing viewpoints, I found it astonishing that Oklahoma voted one man off of a study committee because he was related to CBF. If that mentality does not bother you, let me borrow your milk bucket sometime.

Does the 1996 Louisiana College trustee control of faculty hiring bother you? The questioning and treatment of proposed faculty nominee Dr. Lawanda Smith was unbelievable. But the same could be said of other schools and seminaries where one is not “on our team.”

This ongoing behavior wears us all down, doesn’t it?

Rather than allowing ourselves to become embittered, why don’t we work harder to inform our churches of the issues involved in being Baptist? Why don’t we work harder to insure fully informed messenger representation at our forthcoming state convention? Why don’t we become involved by becoming involved? In that way, we shall guarantee that Texas Baptists keep their heads and their hearts in the right places… and that doesn’t mean either sand or buckets.

September 1996