Last Sunday I left my annotated copy of Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis) at church, and repeated rescue attempts came up empty-handed. Apparently someone had lifted the book during the week: Mere Christianity. Left in a church building. Stolen.
This was ironic.
The deed seemed slightly akin to stealing a Bible, although the potential resale value was significantly less. I was almost forced to assume that whoever took the book did so because they wanted to read it—and so the plot thickened. I could only hope that Lewis was in the hands of someone really evil.
*This Sunday morning, I cunningly baited a trap with a similar prize—Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology, which is not only more visible than Lewis’ slim volume, but carries more monetary weight. Then I preceded to watch my neighbors discreetly. Sadly, I didn’t notice anyone eyeing Theology or stealthily edging closer.
I realized that to really do it right I’d need to leave Grudem sitting on a chair, alone and vulnerable, while I waited in the shadows (at midnight) with a flashlight and a revolver (or maybe just my raw physical strength). However, I’d watched far too many suspense films not to recognize that callously using live bait can have awful results.
If Lewis was really gone, I wasn’t sure I could risk losing Grudem to a similar fate.
But somehow, I would be revenged. Then it struck me: Maybe I could leave a copy of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species disguised in a highly misleading gloss cover…
Yes, that just might do it.
::
* At this point the story veers slightly into fiction, but, as you see, it impugns no one and actually makes the post more interesting. Mere Christianity was returned Sunday morning by a friend who had realized Lewis’ imminent danger the week before and grabbed the book before a less principled person could do so. Our reunion was a joy to behold.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Mere Theft?
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2 comments:
The suspense is killing me. Did you ever find the book? Had it developed annotations or a dust cover? ;)
Once in Nebraska, the book, now calling itself Darwin took a job in a public school where it met and fell in love with a tattered book of English grammar. Sadly this union brought no joy to Darwin or his wife Grammatica, as she was called, though the pair did produce several offspring. These children, a trade magazine known as The Weekly Farmer, a poorly animated comic book concerned primarily with the exploits of a superhumanly powerful anthropomorphic ear of corn and its constantly threatened corn field home, and a unfaithfully kept diary belonging to a Nebraskan minister of small faith and quesionable morals, were of the same mind, namely that Nebraska was not at all a suitable place to live, and that they should strike out together to seek their fortunes in Chicago; The Weekly Farmer quite certain that she would find far greater readership in so populated a city, Amaizing Stories feeling very sure that it would in no time take its place on the silver screen along side its brethren comics, and the diary of Myron P. Kassman, believing the controversies stored upon its pages would ignite fires greater than any Chicago had ever endured.
That they reached Chicago I know for certain, but beyond the fact that they did not achieve the fame they hoped for, I know very little. The last word I did receive was that the comic book was seen lying in an alley as bedding for a drunk, and the diary had become a sketchbook for an artist of significantly bad talent. Of The Weekly Farmer I know nothing, of Darwin and Grammatica, much the same. Shortly after their children's exodus, the two went separate ways, with Darwin as I understand it, ambling back toward the south, sans cart, sans pencils and marker, sans lamp, sans hubcap, sans dreams...
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