“look at that”
“she’s looking around”
“little wide-eyes, this one”

And as I looked at her eyes – eyes that were unable to see little more than blur and shadows at any distance greater than her mother’s upper arm – I realized what it meant to walk into the middle of a story.

She was walking into the middle of many ongoing stories. The story of the doctor. The story of Courtney. My story. The story of America. The story of Christians.

The complexity of this hit me and left within moments…and then was replaced by other complex feelings, which swooped in and out completely beyond my control.

This little human knows nothing of the many backstories that are now a part of this moment. Even I am ignorant of most of those backstories – all but my own.

### Backing up

I grew up in a environment devoted to the Christian church. But I was blinking my eyes, seeing little of what was there, and was clueless to the backstories (both good and evil) that permeated every thought and action of that church.

### Fast forward

If I  built a picture of Jesus and the Christian message based solely upon those who claim to follow him (in the western world), who would Jesus be? What kind of person would he be? What would he value? What would his message sound like?

Now…if I built a picture of Jesus and his message based solely upon his words and actions and the ideas that relate to him in scripture (and without the cultural filters that press down upon us all the time), who would he be?

Would these two pictures be different? If so, how different?

And how different must two thing be before they are completely different?

I suppose you could call it an experiment.