The great movies of all time
When one talks of the greatest movies of all time — Citizen Kane, Casablanca, The Godfather—Caddyshack is usually not mentioned.
But on any given day on any given golf course or in any 19th hole, a line from the movie will be uttered by someone—usually in jest.
Today, I take a more serious tack, and it concerns the vignette in Caddyshack involving Bishop Bickering.
A career round
The bishop is having a career round, and by chance, Carl Spackler (Bill Murray) is on the bag.
Storm clouds threaten, and then a downpour of biblical proportions is unleashed. Bishop Bickering is undeterred. He declares with calm assurance, “The good Lord would never disrupt the best game of my life.”
Spackler responds, “I’d keep playing. I don’t think the heavy stuff is going to come down for quite a while.”
Even in the fierce wind and unrelenting rain, Bickering can do no wrong, pulling off impossible shots and draining lengthy putts. Bickering mentions that he could actually beat the course record.
The fall of the house of Bickering
As they trudge up the 18th fairway, it’s raining sideways, and the soundtrack from the Ten Commandments Exodus scene swells in the background.
Then on the 18th green, Bickering misses a short putt to fall short of the course record. He immediately turns, shakes his putter at the sky, and curses the heavens (“Oh, rat farts!”). Right on cue, a bolt of lightning dives from the clouds and strikes the good bishop.
There is an immediate cut to the next scene in the club’s bar. A liquored-up Bickering mumbles pitifully to the bartender and casually drops a G-bomb. Judge Smails (Ted Knight), trying to awaken some remaining dignity in him, says, “For God’s sake, you’re a bishop!”
Then, in a touch worthy of a sound-editing Oscar, comes the unmistakable crack of an opening billiards break.
Bickering replies, “There is no God.”
Why people walk away from God
They say all good humor is rooted in truth, and that is part of what makes this scene so funny. A bishop losing his faith over a golf game? People have lost their faith over less.
The culprits are many and varied: an unanswered prayer, a health problem, an offense by church people, or the loss of a job.
The loss of faith is almost always situational rather than theological.
How to avoid it
Jesus anticipated the loss of faith, and He taught how to avoid it:
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” — Matthew 7:24–27
In the Parable of the Foundations, the two homebuilders had two things in common: both heard the words of Jesus and both suffered the hard storms of life. The difference? Only one acted on Jesus’ words, and the other merely heard them.
In a fallen world, storms are inevitable, but the loss of faith need not be if we build on a foundation of obedience to Jesus.
In other words, we need not go the way of Bishop Bickering. And that is a good thing. GS
