Book - Muscle and a Shovel, comments.

The book "Muscle and a Shovel"  (MAAS) by Michael Shank is the 30-year-old story of his conversion from Baptist doctrine into Bible truth, as interpreted by Church of Christ tradition. 

And yes, in this case I'm using capital "C" Church of Christ instead of little "c" for the church of Christ.  I do this because I am referring to that group of people who identify themselves with the name Church of Christ (whether or not they spell "church" with a capital or lower-case "c") when they denominate themselves --- split themselves apart from other people --- because they believe that they alone are saved by the power of their own understanding and the correctness of their actions in copying a "pattern" of the church in the first century. 

This has actually resulted in congregations splitting over whether to use wheat or white flour in the unleavened bread for communion, whether or not they must meet in an upper room, whether or not they may use two shared cups rather than just one cup instead of multiple cups for communion, whether or not people may give money to the church on any day other than Sunday (MAAS says no in Ch. 26: “Think about it, Mr. Mike. The first day of the week, according to Paul, is the only day of the week that we’re to lay by in store or to give back to the church, according to 1 Corinthians 16: 1-2.” Although Acts 2:44-47 implies that giving, "breaking bread," and baptizing were a daily occurrence.), and many other arguments over who has the perfectly correct interpretation of what God wants us to do in order to be saved.

I appreciate the fact that in this one book, Shank has put together a fairly comprehensive collection of teachings and interpretations which seem to keep recurring in the Churches of Christ. Having grown up in the church, I have heard these things since the 1950's, (although the ideas are much older) and I have grown to see that some of these interpretations are wrong, biblically speaking. It has been decades since I have heard some of these arguments, but here they are again.

In reading this book, I got the feeling that Michael Shank is trying to be a "shock jock" for doctrine (in a radio Disc Jockey sense), because he seems to delight in trying to offend anyone who believes differently.  But he is right about one thing --- you have to dig deep and know your Bible to see where some of these things may be wrong.

So, if you are reading, or have read, Michael Shank's book, let's open our Bibles and look at a few points where the Bible itself may disagree with what Mr. Shank is promoting.