How's Your Filter?

I understand that a whole bunch of animals from clams and oysters, to whales are "filter feeders". Sea water or muddy fresh water is their supper table. All kinds of stuff drifts by or is sucked in, and the good stuff is retained. Whale bone serves as such a filter for the big guys. I think that is better than using it for ladies corsets.

I'm afraid I too am a kind of filter feeder. When I was a kid, I would visit the village dump. Once I brought home a plaster bull dog. You would plug him in and his eyes lit up red. It must have been put in the trash mistakenly by a person of exquisite taste.

People with eclectic reading habits, or those with unusual friends, are often suspected of drifting from the straight and narrow truth. After all, what could a person raised to be a good, narrow minded, pure, obedient unthinking slave gain from such associations? My answer is, much.

Is there such a thing as a hippy dippy, bohemian, fundamentalist? I aspire to be one. Almost anyone has truth I can learn from. The Bible is my filter. It saves me from adopting error.

But doesn't the Bible have an amazing cast of characters? It shows God's people from all kinds of beliefs and from all nations. I shun none of them. They have, and can, all teach me something, from Abraham, the Babylonian, and the pagan Egyptians who sheltered Joseph when his brothers hated and deserted him.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to be with Christians who would listen, and not always preach?