A Texas woman traveling with her children to church on a Forth Worth mass transit bus was put off by the driver because when asked to stop reading the Bible, she continued and was “simply making too much noise” according to the transportation officials. The passenger, Christine Lutz, allegedly was asked to stop reading her Bible so loud and she responded, “‘No, I’m reading the Bible, I’m teaching the kids, I’m going to continue.” Ms. Lutz was put off of the bus and taken to church by a Supervisor’s van. She is seeking an apology. Transportation officials said had she been ready Moby Dick or citing the Pledge of Allegiance, they would have done the same thing.
This one really isn’t that difficult to splice. The passenger was seated on the back of the bus and she really has no Rosa Parks merit here. Everybody has a right to ride the public transportation bus for the purpose of transit, not to teach their kids. How loud you are on a bus is not an immutable characteristic such as race, ethnicity, or sex. The human ear cares about how much louder a sound is as compared something else. Hearing sensitivity goes up when it’s quiet so you can distinguish quiet sounds, but the sensitivity goes down when it’s loud to protect your hearing.
“Mama” Lutz could not have been as reasonable in her non-disruptiveness as she thinks unless every other passenger on that bus was observing a moment of silence. The bus driver was at the front of the bus, and if she could distinctly hear a passenger reading the Bible from the back of the bus, that passenger was too loud. Mama Lutz was probably not as noisy as typical bunch of kids laughing, but since her Bible reading was heard, it was louder than whatever other activity was taking place at that time. That is just good old common sense, which is often overlooked when people want to be right. Unless the bus driver is a descendent of Steve and Jamie Austin and her bionic ears helped to diffuse the Bible Reading voice from all other loud sounds on the bus, what was reasonable to Mama Lutz was not to the bus driver. A bus driver’s job is not only to drive the bus, but also to maintain public safety.
Now, I know many of us have been on public buses and a ride can be laden with loud music, ebonic expletives, soft porn scenes, folks arguing, street level retail and a host of other activities at annoying sound levels. We need not add loud Bible reading to the list of things that produce loud noise on a bus ride. If we are on the church trip or church van, we might anticipate speaking in tongues, praying and Bible reading loud enough to blow up the Grand Canyon. Christians have a responsibility to be without blame in the world. It was not necessary for Mama Lutz to read to her children at that very moment, and she certainly did not have a right to do it when it could be heard by the driver. Even if she was singled out because the bus driver had a particular aversion to the Word of God and let everyone else swing off of the overhead safety straps (if they still have those on buses), her response should have been to quiet down and APOLOGIZE for being too loud. God’s principles should have governed her behavior. If everybody else was out of control on that bus, the Bible toting and reading Christian should not have been. A passenger’s assessment of her own loudness is not what matters.
Should Mama Lutz get an apology? Well, instead of waiting for another blown up incident to be inflated by religious organizations advancing their own agendas, and for another frivolous lawsuit to hit the dockets, in my opinion, they should cut their losses. Although another out-of-order Christian did get to her destination, she might have been embarrassed and felt discriminated against because she may have experienced bus rides that seemed like a party was going on and did not see those passengers kicked off. But to the Christian, if we want to not be like the world, we also can’t want to be like the world when it is convenient because we are offended. Now when the bus drivers want to stop Christians from merely reading the Word of God on the bus, that’s when I’ll be back on this one. This time, I just don’t think it was an attack against the Bible, or a Christian because of her religious beliefs. Lutz was just loud.
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