I wrote down the answers I used to fumble

Waffle house, back end of July, plates still on the table. Somebody asked me a plain question about the Bible.

I do not remember what I said. I remember reaching for my phone. That is the part I want on the record. Not the question. The reach. I have done it more than once.

Somebody asks, and I give them the shape of an answer, the general contour of one, the sound a man makes when he is buying time, and then I move the conversation somewhere I can survive it, and then later, in the dark, alone, with nobody watching, I look it up.

Cowardice with good manners.

So I wrote the answers down. 100 Plain Questions About the Bible.

Ten banks of ten. The question the way people actually ask it, out loud, no seminary in it. Then the verse whole. Then two or three sentences. That is the entire machine.

There is nothing else in it.

Real ones out of it:

Does whosoever actually mean me?

Can I lose it?

Have I committed the unpardonable sin?

What happens to a child who dies before he is old enough to understand any of this?

I came to God once and walked off. Will he take me back?

What about the secluded tribes who never heard?

Those are not curiosities.

Somebody at your table is already carrying one of them and has been for years.

The wife who has wondered for eleven years whether she is one of the whosoever and has never once said it out loud.

The kid who asked at supper and got the contour.

They stopped asking you because they watched you reach for your phone.

The verse goes first. Every time. If my paragraph ever outruns the verse sitting above it, throw my paragraph out.

I am not the authority in the book. I am the guy who typed. Built for the table, not the study.

A question comes across it, you open one page, you read it out loud before the food gets cold.

Print edition. One made for a phone. One that reflows on a reader.

Verse index in the back so you can hunt by whatever fight you are in this week.

Pay what you want.

Five dollar floor. https://deadhidden.org/store/100-plain-questions

Somebody is going to ask you tonight.