Of Haynes Repair Manuals, the Bible, and America's Founding
How nonbelievers sound when lecturing believers.
The Christian Bible is a collection of words.
So is a Haynes aftermarket auto repair manual - remember those? Back when we worked on naturally aspirated, non-computer-controlled engines, tuning them with feeler gauges, a screwdriver, and a good ear for the smooth purr of a properly timed and tuned engine.
But the Bible - or a novel for that matter - and a Haynes manual aren’t the same beast. One’s crafted to tell a story, to grab you by the heart or the gut, to spark some kind of response - reverence, strength, love, laughter, tears, or a fist slammed on the table. The other? It’s just a dry stack of technical info, grouped to guide you through an emotionless task. Unless, of course, the wrench slips, and you flay the skin off three knuckles. Then it gets really emotional, really fast. Sometimes wrenches get thrown and cuss words are said with gusto (not the Gavin Newsom faux types, the real ones).
I’ve got a few knuckle scars to prove it and I do have a potty mouth at times.
I was chewing on this last week while scrolling through X, watching the left lecture - and hector - the right about what the Bible says on treating foreigners. Oh, man, I love it when folks who think God’s a myth and the Bible’s just a dusty collection of right-wing fairy tales decide they’re qualified to school believers who see it as divinely inspired. It’s like me trying to lecture a quantum physicist on string theory after skimming half a Wikipedia page. These folks cherry-pick verses with all the passion of someone reading the head bolt torque specs for a ’65 Chevy 283 V-8 (a freaking great small block, as smooth as a shot of Pappy Van Winkle, and as tough as nails).
They strip the Bible of God, turning it into a technical manual: “Insert charity here, rotate 90 degrees, avoid eternal damnation.”
That’s not how it works.
It’s not just the Bible they do this to. They pull the same stunt with our founding documents - the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. When people who don’t believe in America’s principles, who think “liberty” is just a buzzword for old white guys in wigs, start quoting those texts, it’s like they’re reading step-by-step instructions for installing points and a condenser in that Chevy V-8.
No heart, no fire, no grasp of the blood and sacrifice baked into those words. They miss the part where the Declaration isn’t just ink on parchment - it’s a middle finger to tyranny, a dare to dream bigger. The Constitution? It’s not a user manual; it’s a battle plan for a free people to stay that way.
Without belief, without that gut-level connection to our heart, souls and minds, the Bible, the Declaration, and the Constitution are just words on a page - flat as a televangelist’s sermon or a misfiring spark plug.
They’re not meant to be read like you’re rebuilding a carburetor. They’re alive, pulsing with purpose, demanding you feel their weight. You don’t get that from a Haynes manual, no matter how many times you curse at a seized bolt (after wrapping your hand with a shop towel). And you sure don’t get it from folks who think these documents - sacred or secular - are just relics to be dissected or weaponized.
Me? I’ll still be tuning my soul by belief and reading my founding texts with a little reverence.
Even after a knuckle bruise or two.
Part of the problem is that, without that connection to God that brings the Bible to life, the Constitution has no life either. This is why Adams said that, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." If you reject God, there is nothing constraining the conscience to actually follow the Constitution.
And they read the Bible without any sense of nuance or of context. The “ger” or “stranger” who lives inside the allotted lands of the tribes of Israel were expected to abide by the same laws as governed their hosts. But they could not raise up and worship their ancestral idols. But the ILLEGAL ALIENS whom the leftists are championing are breaking the laws of our land and their defiantly waving their national flags is akin to the raising of foreign idols in ancient Israel.