The Church of the Heavenly Boot Straps.
A satire.
Brightly shone the Sun upon those entering the Church of the Heavenly Boot Straps, its warm rays caressing them as if God Himself were stroking their wonderful, well-booted selves as they filed into the building. Certainly, for this impressive congregation, God would be pleased to do so; for they had labored long, and carefully, and hard to obey Him – as their magnificent, strapped boots so boldly signified. Casting many sidelong glances at one another, both to examine others and to see that they were examined, the members of the Church of the Heavenly Boot Strap crowded into the sanctuary, each finding their customary spot upon the rows of dark, ancient, wooden pews. Amidst the creaking and groaning of old oak, perfunctory nods, polite smiles, and brief handshakes were exchanged and ponderous posteriors plumped down upon their proper place.
As the coughs, rustling of paper bulletins and clothing, and whispered words subsided, from a door at the side of the main platform, the pastor issued forth. Pulling powerfully upon his boot-straps he bounded to the pulpit, reaching it in only three leaps, prompting appreciative murmurs from his audience. With piercing gaze, Pastor Harvey Hardstraps surveyed those seated before him, patting his hair into place and straightening his tie.
“Please, rise,” he intoned.
In perfect unison, the congregants all bent over in their pews, gripped their boot-straps and heaved upwards upon them, jumping into the air as they did so. With a terrific “THUMP!” that shook the entire building, the congregation dropped to the floor. Releasing their straps, they all straightened, smoothing skirts and adjusting suit jackets, checking hairpins and coifs, and lifting hymnals in preparation for the first song of the service.
“Let us pray,” Pastor Hardstraps said, eyes closing as he crouched down and slipped his fingers into his boot-straps.
The congregation followed suit, sounds of annoyance issuing from those who had taken up their hymnals prematurely and now hastily set them down, giving the prescribed token tug on their bootstraps.
Yanking vigorously on his straps and springing three feet into the air, Pastor Hardstraps, began, “Father in heaven.” His magnificent, Corinthian leather, steel-toed, hob-nailed boots boomed upon the hardwood planks of the platform. Instantly, he pulled up again on his straps and vaulted skyward continuing, “We thank thee, for thy wondrous presence with us this morning.”
And so his prayer continued, at the beginning of each sentence in it, Pastor Hardstraps heaved and hovered, his statements short and rushed, matched to the length of time he was airborne. It was a testament to his great spiritual development that he was able to continue in this way, up and down like a child on a pogo stick, for five minutes, only a single drop of sweat upon his brow at the conclusion of his prayer.
Under the cover of the first hymn, begun with a congregational jump, Pastor Hardstraps caught his breath. By the time “I Lifted Me” ended, he was fully recovered - a wonderful example of a spiritually-mature man - and was able, along with his audience, to finish the hymn with a final pious plyometric.
Four songs more were sung, the last a modern chorus requiring much more boot-strap work than usual (a leap at the beginning and end of each stanza). The red-faced, gasping crowd that dropped onto the pews at the end of the singing, a few clutching their chests, others wiping their faces with handkerchiefs, had Pastor Hardstraps scowling in disapproval. Mrs. Bittermouth, the church gossip, had collapsed entirely, disappearing from view between the pews, her neighbors trying vainly to raise her corpulent form to standing. It was plain to Pastor Hardstraps that, though her boot-straps were large and sturdy, Mrs. Bittermouth had not been using them. And the general breathless condition of his other congregants indicated to him that this was the case for them, as well. Something would have to be done.
With both hands, Pastor Hardstraps lifted high his enormous Bible, then let it drop, the noise of its contact with the pulpit punching out of the sound system into the ears of the slowly-recovering assembly. Shrieks and shouts of startlement burst from them, but they all sat to attention, some already wincing in anticipation of what was to come.
“God helps those who help themselves,” Hardstraps said in a low, ominous tone. “Why do you think there are straps upon our boots? Are they there merely for show, to impress our neighbors - even, perhaps to DECEIVE them?”
His eyes raked across his audience, fixing upon the slack-faced Mrs. Bittermouth who was now slouched over in her pew, eyes closed, pale lips wide apart, feathered, pill-box hat askew upon her grey curls, her purple dress bunched up under her arms and around her neck in a most ungodly way.
“Our strength is in the Lord, yes,” Pastor Hardstrap continued, “but we must ever exert ourselves, learning to grip our straps with unrelenting firmness, and to pull upon them with holy fervor, leaping heavenward with joy and power!”
He leaned across the pulpit, eyes wide, his bony, strap-calloused finger thrusting directly at Mrs. Bittermouth and declared, “How shall we escape, if we neglect our great salvation, which we labor, boot-wise, daily to deserve? If we fail to develop our fingers so that they may pull and we do not oil our straps so that they are supple and strong, should we be surprised if we cannot, then, pull ourselves up into holy, God-honoring living?” Slamming his fist down upon the pulpit, Pastor Hardstraps shouted, “Nay! I say to thee, Nay! You shall not rise from the ground at all, and so, will die in your sins.”
As inconspicuously as possible, those seated next to Mrs. Bittermouth slid along the pew away from her, fearful lest others think that the stabbing digit of Pastor Hardstrap was aimed at them. Realizing it had been many weeks since they’d last oiled them, some members began to pick nervously at their straps, wondering who had betrayed them to the pastor. Others wrestled with a sudden urge to grab their straps and start madly pulling and leaping in the aisle, demonstrating they were above reproach. But they were not Pentecostals and remained seated.
Pausing for effect, Pastor Hardstraps straightened and stepped out from behind the pulpit walking to the front edge of the stage, his thick-soled, heavy-duty footwear on full display, the prodigious, well-oiled straps attached to them drawing all eyes.
And well they should stare, he thought, these bad boys cost me five hundred bucks.
Suddenly, the sound of squeaking interrupted the silence and a little, dark-haired girl in a sky-blue dress and a pair of yellow, rubber boots tottered down the aisle toward the platform and the looming form of Pastor Hardstraps.
Watching her approach, Hardstraps noted with disapproval the red, over-sized loops on the tops of her noisy boots - “learner straps” they were called – which he felt were quite illegitimate, not having been earned (and also larger than his own), which was ridiculous and offensive. But at least her parents hadn’t had the temerity to give her actual leather boots to wear. Common rubber was far more appropriate to her age and understanding, though he was not at all in favor of the cutesy noise her boots had been manufactured to produce. He was certain God did not approve of boots that sounded like one was constantly stepping on mice.
Putting her hands on the edge of the stage and looking up at Pastor Hardstraps with big, dark-brown eyes, Saucy – only child of Olivia and Benjamin Snootles – announced in a loud, cheery voice “Mommy learned me a Bible verse!”
“Did she, indeed?” Pastor Hardstraps replied, his weighty gaze descending upon Olivia Snootles who was crouched in the aisle only a few feet behind her daughter, her expression knotted in consternation. “Has she been teaching you proper, boot-strap theology, too?”
Smiling, Saucy repeated, “I learned a Bible verse!”
She crawled up the stairs to the stage at which point Pastor Hardstraps, the laces of his sermon snapped by her intrusion, glowered fiercely and pointed at the child, in a cold tone commanding, “Remove this child from the stage.”
But, before anyone could act to do so, to the great horror of all, Saucy kicked off her rubber boots, each of them giving a loud, impious squeak as they hit the floor of the stage. “I don’t like boots!” she declared and, lifting a leg, wiggled her little pink toes at the congregation.
Staggering back from Saucy’s scandalous words and her waggling digits, Pastor Hardstraps, hand clapped across his eyes, bellowed, “Remove her! Remoooove her!”
“I can do all things through Jesus who makes me strong!” Saucy sang as she threw her boots into the air. Then, jumping up and down she cried, “See? I don’t need boots! Jesus gave me legs!”
His hands clutching desperately at the sides of the pulpit, Pastor Hardstraps goggled at Saucy. Hoarsely, he croaked, “Somebody, get this blasphemer off the stage.”
Saucy walked over to Pastor Hardstraps, patted his leg and said, “It’s okay, Mister Harmslaps, you don’t need any boots, too. It’s Jesus who makes you strong!” She jumped again and laughed. “See? No boots!”
Before Saucy could cause any further devilish chaos, her mother scooped her up and hustled her off the platform, a dull roar of dismayed exclamations chasing them right out of the sanctuary. But as they scooted for the exit (Mr. Snootles joining them) Saucy’s happy song rang out:
“I can do all things through Jesus who makes me strong!
He makes me strong!
I don’t need boots.
I don’t need straps.
Jesus makes me strong!
La, la-la, la, la-la!”
As the door to the sanctuary shut upon the wretched trio, adding insult to injury, Saucy’s high, lilting voice wafted in: “Look at my toes, Mommy!”
For a long moment, Pastor Hardstraps stood, motionless and silent, his gaze nailed to the door through which Saucy had exited, but then, bending over and gripping his boot straps, Pastor Hardstraps roared, hauling with all his might upon his bootstraps and launched himself into the air. Up, up he went, higher than anyone at the Church of the Heavenly BootStraps had ever seen him rise. Great and terrible adversity had brought out his best.
With a holy thundering, Pastor Hardstraps’s boots pounded the floor of the platform, and the stunned hush of the assembly in response was almost palpable. After such a display, could they ever doubt his spiritual depth and wisdom? The atrocious child with the squeaky boots and doctrine of demons was eradicated from their minds. He would yet recover his sermon!
Straightening, chest puffing out, Pastor Hardstraps clicked his heels together in eagerness to verbally excoriate the naïve and damnable implications of the little girl’s words. Jesus would make them strong? Only in theory. In reality, they could only rise heavenward briefly, under the constraints of their flesh and gravity ascending and descending rapidly, over and over again. This was the Christian life. Had he not told them so many times, living out before them in great and frequent leaps and bounds proper Boot Strap theology? Yes, he always fell back to earth, needing to lift himself again toward God, but this was the way of it, as they all knew.
And so, he preached to them, for an hour holding forth upon the evil of heeding words spoken from the mouths of foolish babes, and of neglecting one’s straps, and the carnality of wearing sound-making footwear. Hardstraps was the embodiment of Boot Strap theology, leaping about like a cat on aluminum foil, again and again, throughout his tirade.
Sodden with sweat, legs leaden with fatigue, Pastor Hardstraps finally concluded his sermon. As he considered the effect of his words upon his audience, his gaze seeking out the awestruck expressions of his listeners, he found all eyes turned away from him, fixed instead upon the platform.
Do they not realize I’ve finished? Have they not been listening to me? What else on this stage could be of greater interest than I?
Following the stares of his congregants, Hardstraps turned to his right. There on the stage, only a few feet away, in all their bumble-bee-yellow glory, were lying two little rubber boots.
Swiftly, Hardstraps snatched up the obscene things and stuffed them inside his suit jacket. “You’re all dismissed. Go with God,” he said and reflexively bent down to leap his way off the stage.
But he couldn’t grip his straps and keep the wretched rubber boots from falling to the floor. If they fell, they’d be seen again; they’d make that horrible squeaking; the cheerful words of that little pink-toed monster would be remembered and his own forgotten. Never!
And so, in full view of everyone, Pastor Hardstraps just walked off the stage. Naturally, his congregants, having stood respectfully to watch their pastor’s bounding exit, were shocked, and the pews creaked and groaned again as many of them sat down heavily, open-mouthed and wide-eyed at the flagrant, sinful conduct of their pastor. He had not touched his straps! He had not jumped heavenward! Were his words a lie, then? Look, he was sneaking out with Saucy’s boots! What wickedness was this? There would be a business meeting! So thought those watching Hardstraps departure.
All except Mrs. Bittermouth.
Just as Hardstraps passed through the door through which he’d entered the stage, she caught his eye. Her mouth was quirked into a small, nasty smile and her vicious, piggy eyes were aglitter with new slander. Oh, the pleasing hours she would have gossiping over the phone about her pastor’s profligacy. He collects children’s boots, did you know? He may even be in secret apostasy. That’s right. He believes in the power of Jesus more than his own boot straps. Wicked stuff, don’t you think?
If you’ve got this far, you deserve some explanation of what you’ve just read. Well, simply, it is this: I wanted to point straight at the deeply-entrenched Boot Strap Theology that plagues the modern, western, evangelical Church and make a little fun of it. In my experience anyway, while lip-service is given to the enabling power of the Holy Spirit (Phil. 2:13; Eph. 3:16; 6:10; 2 Cor. 3:18, Ro. 8:13, etc.), in practice, Christian living for the majority resolves down to the title of the hymn in the story above: “I Lifted Me.”
But God intends to form in His children the supernatural character of Jesus (Ro. 8:29) which cannot take shape in them by mere natural human power (Ga. 3:3). Until Christians leave off Hardstraps’ theology, they will remain in the Church of the Heavenly Boot Strap, never truly enjoying Jesus, as little Miss Saucy did.