Some time ago, someone came up with the idea of developing a Bible study that is accompanied by watching videos of the old Andy Griffith Show. It’s very popular. The thought behind it is that the values expressed in the lives of Andy and Aunt Bee and Opie and Goober and Gomer and deputy Barney Fife and all the others are reflective of wholesome, Biblical family values. Without coming right out and saying it, the Bible study is an attempt to convey the thought that – after two thousand years and a couple of trillion miles on the odometer – God’s family car finally came to a complete stop in the little town of Mayberry. And it hasn’t budged since. And if we want to find the world as God intends it to be, we need to go back to Mayberry RFD.

Now, it would be almost un-American to not like The Andy Griffith Show. It’s one of my personal favorites. But its very easy to forget some things about the world that show represents. The series, for instance, was born on October 3rd, 1960. Its idyllic portrayal of life in the South, however, ignores the fact that, in 1960, it was still illegal for blacks to eat at lunch counters at five and dime stores. In fact, a number of blacks were arrested and beaten at a Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, North Carolina that very year, but you’d never know it by watching the show. The Andy Griffith Show had an 8 year run, but in the course of those eight years, no hint is given about how in 1963 a bomb blew up three little girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Or about how, during the so-called Summer of Love in 1967, more than 3,000 American kids were killed in Vietnam. Or that, despite the new rumblings of the ecumenical movement, Protestant kids and Catholic kids faced tremendous resistance from both sides if they fell in love and married. They were often disowned by families and excommunicated by churches who also considered their children to be illegitimate.

I don’t know how you see it, but it seems to me that the Holy Spirit had a lot of work to do in the America represented by Mayberry, RFD.

You see, you really can’t try to recreate the past. The only path to a better world is the one that leads to the future. This is the road of faith.

And Jesus meets us along the way.