The East Burlap Parables Book Review

While this Christian book may be hard to find I wanted to share the snippet I pulled from it when I wrote this Christian book review for my church newsletter. As we reflect on the fruit of the Spirit and love, loving God, loving ourselves and loving our neighbors I thought this story might hit home. So, with help from our esteemed librarian Evelyn, I borrowed this book which at first look reminded me of Lake Wobegon.

The East Burlap Parables by Richard N. Rinker, a collection of 74 “parables”, is humorous. However if we find ourselves open to the humor hopefully we too will find ourselves open to the issues behind the satire.

East Burlap, an imaginary church Rinker wrote about in 1969 (some of the parables are timely), has something for everyone but I should also say that everything in The East Burlap Parables is not for everyone. Rinker who is a Minister, chooses satire not to amuse as much as to send a message about problems he sees in the church. Along with his parables divided into five sections, he closes out each section with commentary on problems in the church and attitudes of its members. This is a Christian book that is perfect for Adult Sunday School.

An excerpt from The East Burlap Parables:

Number Three

As they were bound to do sooner or later, the national office of The Denomination has come out with a system for calculating the final destinations of individual Christians.

Based on computerized analysis, E.D.E.N. (Eventual Destination–Extrapolationally Nuanced) uses punched cards for church members. Every person at our East Burlap Church received a computer card to punch for every other person in the local church there. On each card the individual replies to the question “Do you think he/she will end up in heaven or hell?”

(1) Heaven
(2) Hell
(3) Don’t really know him/her
well enough to say

When all cards are in for a particular church, they are fed to a computer for tabulation.

Contrary to common supposition, the E.D. for a person is not arrived at by totaling replies about him/her from all others in his/her church. The “heaven” and “hell” replies are insignificant in the final results.

Each person, in replying about all other persons in his/her church, actually establishes his/her own E.D. on this basis of how many times he/she has punched number three on his/her cards. If you can find it anywhere.… CHECK IT OUT!

So how many 3′s do you think you have given out? Do you think that living in the Spirit could help you apply more 1′s in your life, maybe change some 2′s to 1′s if God gives you the chance?