Biography
Following seminary, the Rev. Dr. Robert Short tried his hand as a professional actor and worked in commercial and religious T.V. Then, in 1965, he wrote a little book called "The Gospel According to Peanuts", which exploded on the publishing scene and became the number one non-fiction best seller in the U.S. Since then, Robert Short has uncovered theology in a wide variety of popular art forms—in films and plays and other cartoons—as well in the works of Shakespeare, Rembrandt, and Great Music. Through his books and live presentations, he has reached millions of people with what he calls, "Christianity without doom or gloom." Bob serves as Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Monticello, Arkansas, but continues to travel and make presentations all across the U.S. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

"God's Love and Peanuts" 
According to St. Augustine, "Our hearts are formed for Thee, O Lord, and are restless until they find their rest in Thee."

After another of her innumerable defeats, Peppermint Patty tells Charlie Brown:

Our hearts are also restless like Peppermint Patty's and they remain restless until they find something very much like the Christ-like Charlie Brown that we see in this picture.

Now the Christian Faith not only believes that Jesus is God's one and only, once and for all, self-disclosure of himself in history, but it also believes that the only on-the-spot witness of faith to this self-disclosure is found in the Bible. In the Bible, Christians believe, faith's whole original witness to Jesus is recorded. Therefore, we call this book "holy"—if you'll pardon the pun.

And so the Bible, then, is the bag in which all Christians find themselves. But this doesn't really solve our problems. In a sense, our troubles are just beginning. Because the Bible is a "mixed bag"; it's a complex set of a lot of very different and very human voices speaking in it. Consequently the central point or unifying center of the Bible often appears obscure or ambiguous or disunified.

So what can we do then to better penetrate the inner core of the Bible in order that more Christians can be centered around this point in unity of faith? I think we need to recognize that any time we set out looking for an inner or spiritual point like this, we're always tempted to use an outer or unspiritual means of securing it or tying it up. The spirit gives us the security we need, and then we want to secure the security. We want to box the spirit in or nail it down.

In one way or another, churches have always been engaged in the same kind of attempts at capturing and securing the spirit or love—i.e., God or his Holy Spirit. We have wanted to lock up the Spirit in "the one true church" or in "the one infallible person" or—in the case of many groups—in "the one inerrant book," i.e, the literal text of the Bible.

Biblical literalism also explains why so many people can be "biblical literalists" without even knowing what the Bible actually says. Because in our search for absolute security, it's much easier just to believe that whatever the Bible says is true—regardless of what it says. If we just "believe in the Bible," as the saying goes, we won't even have to know what it says—much less what it means.

So then, how do we deal with this problem? And indeed we've got to deal with it. Because anytime we want to follow the Spirit alone, and not some idolatrous outward authority or security, then we've got to come to our own conclusions about what the Bible says and means. This isn't an easy task, but it's got to be done if we want to be followers of the Spirit of God.

Well, if as Christians we are commanded to love God will all our strength and mind and heart, and if we also believe that the God we seek is known only through the Bible, then obviously we should approach the Bible in the same way—that is, with all our strength and mind and heart. So first we'll consider:

Strength: "Strength" means to work ... to expend effort ... to know the Bible and to know it well. Beware of biblical smatterers. They quote chapter and verse of their favorite passages but ignore a lot of other things. In the desert when Satan quoted scripture to Jesus, Jesus defended himself by quoting scripture back to Satan and thus showed he knew scripture better than Satan. Likewise our best defense against biblical smatterers, against tempters and all the rest is to know scripture better than they do. Week after week for twelve years running, Charles Schulz, the creator of "Peanuts", taught the same adult Bible Sunday School class at church near his home in California. And that requires a lot of strength expended—the work and time in preparation, traveling the extra mile, etc. But this use of his material strength has given Schutz a spiritual strength that's hard to match:

Next: love God—and therefore know the Bible—with all your mind. God has given us a critical intelligence and he commands us to use it. To understand, we've got to study and think. In doing this kind of thing, we may of course sometimes set ourselves apart from a lot of other people. But that's beside the point. We're commanded to use our heads:

We can use our strength and minds to know scripture and know it well. And there's no substitute for that. But neither is there a substitute for the power of God, which alone can open our hearts and give scripture access to our hearts. To put it another way, by using our own power we can know scripture with our minds; but a proper understanding of scripture is finally dependent on the Spirit, or upon God's power. So this is a type of learning, then, that can't be taught—it can only be "caught." And hence this famous statement by Oscar Wilde:

Ultimately it is the Spirit that helps us in our weakness and brings us into a proper understanding of God and Christ and scripture and even into a proper understanding of the Spirit.

The New Testament tells us we are to "Test the spirits, to see whether they are from God." And as long as we're looking for God in the person of his Holy Spirit, there are two tests Christians can apply to various spirits. First, what this spirit points to—does it point to Jesus as the Christ, i.e., to Jesus as God's decisive, once and for all, revelation of himself; and second, how it points to Christ—that is, how this Spirit makes is witness known to our hearts. Well, the first thing to say in this regard is that the Holy Spirit is not—nor ever has it been—the spirit of fear. Logically, the ultimate motive-- or emotion – for a person being a Christian can only be either a positive or a negative emotion. It can't finally be both. And the New Testament is very clear that the Christian's motive or emotion is deeply and emphatically positive; and the positive motive the New Testament characterizes as love, and the negative emotion is characterized as fear. "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear."

I've had the privilege and pleasure of knowing Charles Schutz very closely now for a long time. And I know for a fact that the one type of "Christianity" that Schulz has absolutely no use for is the so-called "Christianity" that's finally based on fear and wrath and judgment and hell and belief in a punishment in some future existence. And on this point at least, I couldn't agree with Schulz more. From a theological point of view this is why his entire life's work is set within the context of humor. "Humor," Schulz says, "is a proof of faith, proof that everything is going to be all right with God, nevertheless those who find no humor in faith are probably those who find the church a refuge for their own black way of looking at life." There is punishment for sin, but sin carries its own punishment with it—right here and now, inside us, right here and now. But for Charles Schulz and for me as well, the very last word that God has for all of us is yes, and not no.

Finally there is no sin that anyone's capable of that's stronger or larger than God's love and mercy. We believe, along with St. Paul, that all things come from God's love and that finally all things—including all people—will return to the God who is love. Or if I may speak crudely, in order to speak clearly, we believe that finally, when the roll is called up yonder, everyone—everyone without exception—will finally be there. Everyone will "go to heaven." And here are some of the ways St. Paul expresses this thought:

"For [God] has made known to us ... a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth."

"As in Adam all men die, so in Christ all will be brought to life... and when all things are thus subject to him, then ... God will be all in all."

This is why, dear friends, if there is one theme you can expect to see in Peanuts year in and year out, it's Schulz's gentle needling of a so-called "Christianity" of some future doom and damnation.

Fortunately for us, it's like Linus says of the Gospel of Luke:

Fortunately for us, the God of Jesus Christ is not a touchy ogre like "the Great Pumpkin"

Fortunately for us, God's mercy and love and forgiveness will finally fall upon all the children he has created, just as his rain falls: it falls on the just and on the unjust. And that's a good system; because finally all of us mere mortals—without exception- are among the unjust.

And so, little flock, in testing the Spirit, it is as St. John tells us: "Fear has to do with punishment, and they who fear are not perfected in love."

In other words, don't let your hearts be troubled; and don't let the gloomy-doomies threaten you with "the fear of frying." Don't be intimidated by "the gospel at gunpoint". Because the spirit of fear is the very opposite of the Spirit of God. Snoopy's encounters with the Red Baron and all of his hilarious World War I skirmishes are funny precisely because that's a war that has already been fought. In the same way, Christianity is a "divine comedy" because it too is involved in a battle that's already been fought and won. Jesus Christ is already the victor. His work is done ... complete... "It is finished", as Jesus himself could say. It leaves nothing—or no one—undone. Christ has already defeated all of the forces of sin and evil and death for all people. What we're involved in now is simply a "mopping up operation" that takes place in the mean time. Anything less would make Christ only a second rate savior of some of the people, and God only a cruel, sadistic God who knowingly creates his own children for their own damnation. So don't be afraid, little flock, and don't forget to laugh.

And, interestingly enough, in reading the Bible from this more positive, optimistic point of view, it would seem that the entire Bible is either a kind commentary on—or a variation of—one, single, central point or theme, and that theme's implications for us, namely, as Paul could put it:

"The love of God known to us in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Because that love, friends, and to make certain the knowledge of that love, is what the Bible is all about.

Interview with Nathan Baxter
Interviewed by Lydia Talbot

Lydia Talbot: Bob, you begin your book, The Gospel According to Peanuts, with a reference to theologian Paul Tillich and his observation on the pain that we feel when people reject the Gospel because the Gospel has not been properly communicated. How did you first connect with a comic strip as a source of religious sensibility?

Robert Short: I was in seminary at Perkins School of Theology, that's down in Dallas, and Peanuts was new on the scene. I had one professor in particular who was always ripping Peanuts out of the newspaper. He would bring it to class and say, "This is an illustration of something we've been trying to get you guys to understand." Immediately everybody would seem to understand it when they could see it in "Peanuts." So it seemed to me that there was so much good material in Schulz's strip that you could actually put books together in which you would attempt to illustrate major themes of theological material, and at the same time, point out some of the things that Schulz is so good at weaving into the fabric of "Peanuts." And, of course, when you're in seminary you are reading all these very thick, dull, dry theological tomes, and the idea of having a book with some humor in it for a change—a theological book with cartoons—really appealed to me.

Talbot: So the underlying religious meaning—subtle meaning—in aspects of popular culture, doesn't that really touch on the great dividing line in Christianity between liberals and conservatives? Those who might see that relevance of divine mystery only in the Christ event and those who have the capacity to see divine mystery in other events and other aspects of life.

Short: I see it as a means of doing more effective communication. You've got to start where people are, of course, and this doesn't mean simply re-translating the Bible into a language that sounds more contemporary, but it also means using the images and things that popular culture creates in order to speak to people in its more relevant way. If you can't get to people except in talking in terms of popular art, then you've got to use the popular arts. But you hope at the end of this kind of conversation—whether you are using comic strips or movies or whatever—then they'll say, "This is interesting, this interpretation of this particular work of art you have come up with here, but do you mean to tell me that this is what the Christian message has been saying all this time? Does the bible really have that in it?" And so what you have done is use these art forms as a kind of modern-day parable or indirect means of getting to what you really want to talk about.

Talbot: And you're doing of at least fifteen video visual presentation around the country these days.

Short: All kinds of presentations like this all over the place.

Talbot: Shakespeare.

Short: Yes. One of my favorites.

Talbot: Calvin, Hobbes and Christ.

Short: Calvin and Hobbes. Yes, yes. It goes from what you might call the sublime to the ridiculous, I suppose, Calvin and Hobbes and Shakespeare, but I enjoy doing it.

Talbot: But we are just delighted that you've allowed us to revisit one of our favorite theologians, Charlie Brown. Thanks so much, Dr. Robert Short.