Toilet Theology

I stopped in the men’s room on the way into the Meijer grocery store. Never pass up a chance at a rest room, and always wear clean underwear — good rules for living.  In one stall a Billy Graham tract sat on the toilet paper dispenser.  It was an attractive leaflet with a picture of footsteps on a beach and the title Steps to Peace With God.

Step 1. Understand God’s Purposes — Peace and Eternal Life
Step 2. Admit the Problem — Our Sin and Separation
Step 3. Discover God’s Bridge — the Cross
Step 4. Embrace the Truth — Receive Christ

Appropriate scripture references appear under each step. I like the imperative verbs: understand, admit, discover, and embrace. As gospel outlines go, this is a good one.  I’ve long admired Billy Graham.  Someone at the Grace Bible Church cared enough about my spiritual well-being to leave this tract in the men’s room.

It’s not unheard of to ponder theology on the toilet. Luther, one tradition says, made his spiritual breakthrough while sitting ‘on the privy.’  There is some ambiguity about this story, actually, and the remark he made about it is cryptic, but it’s a striking image anyway. Lots of people then and now read while sitting on the toilet.

Some churches dislike gospel tracts, but I think they have their place.  They might touch someone’s life with the message of Christ.  There are people who will never sit in church and listen to a sermon, but they might read a tract on the toilet.  It’s not a bad exercise either to summarize the gospel in this way.  How would you sift the good news of Christ down to a few lines and pictures on a leaflet?  What scripture verses would you highlight?  In our over-informed, bullet-point society, people may need this simplification more than we know.

If I left a tract in a men’s room, I’d choose Come To the Light, from the same publisher as the one I found at Meijer.  It draws imagery from a scene in Hugo’s Les Miserables and uses it to illustrate the gospel.