Magic Books and Vampires

I promised a while ago to write something about the Bible and how we treat it. What are the ways in which we use (and misuse) scripture? What are the ways we ought to be using it? This may in fact be the answer to all those questions. Or it may be a bunch of disconnected ramblings. We’ll know in a bit.

I grew up around people who had learned that the Bible was special, and not just because of what it contained. They had learned that the Bible was to be treated differently from other books. If you had a stack of books, for example, you put the Bible on top. Why? Because it wasn’t treating it with the appropriate respect to put something else on it. If you didn’t treat the Bible with respect, then God would get you, in one of those cool Old Testament ways, probably turning you into a pillar of salt by day and fire by night or something.

These were old-school SOUTHERN Southern Baptists, from Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and so on, and they knew that good SBs had a reverence for Scripture that set them apart from all those old dead denominations. We were people of the Word, and when someone said that we worshipped the Father, Son and Holy Bible, there was an uncomfortable amount of truth in the joke.

It was easy to understand how the Bible was used in horror movies, as the holy symbol that could turn away evil. If God was going to zap me for setting my hat on my Thompson Chain Reference KJV, then what would he do to a vampire when you shoved it in his face? No wonder the vampire cringed and slunk off – he knew what was coming if he went up against the Bible. (That was why I had the Thompson Chain KJV – it weighed about 15 pounds and if the vampire didn’t slink away on his own, I could have whacked him with it.)

What I didn’t learn from my missionary aunts and uncles was how to read the Bible. Not that they didn’t – missionaries who don’t spend time absorbing and understanding God’s Word don’t last long – but somehow it seemed disconnected from who they were. I managed to get the idea (and this was not something that anyone taught me) that reading Scripture was a grown-up thing to do, that when you turned eighteen you suddenly had this desire to read the Bible. I didn’t really want to, but I didn’t worry about it, since I wasn’t eighteen yet and God hadn’t put the magic desire into my heart.

I wound up reading the Bible quite a bit though. Not because I had to, but because I was bored. My parents had this thing about going to church, so we went a lot. Some of you may remember how boring “Big Church” was when you started going. (Some of you may still think it’s boring.) Imagine how much worse it would have been if you couldn’t understand the language being used. Our church services were all in the local tribal language, and while I understood a few words, I wasn’t up to following a sermon.

So I read my Bible. Not, again, because of some magic desire, or because I ‘m an MK and we’re perfect, but because I love to read and THERE WAS NOTHING ELSE available. We didn’t even have hymnals. There was a calendar on the wall, but it didn’t change much. (I think it was from several years earlier.) I read my Bible. Not in any organized way, but like a book, or at least like a bunch of books. I read Genesis twenty or thirty times, as well as the rest of the books of Moses. I found the Law fascinating – you mean, we’re not allowed to wear clothes made of two different materials? – although I didn’t really understand how it related to us as believers. I read Joshua and Judges because they had battles and killing and stuff. (There will always be a fond spot in my heart for Ehud.)

I read Proverbs over and over again; I loved how it put things. I read at least some of the Psalms, although I rarely read it as a book, being more inclined to read a few and then go somewhere else. I read the gospels a number of times, somehow without ever really encountering Christ. (Although, years later much of what I had read came back, and was a key part of me deciding to truly follow him.) I read John’s Revelation, because it was all about the end of the world and had cool things in it. (This was the era of Hal Lindsey, after all, and we all knew that Christ’s return was likely to be next Tuesday, so I figured I should know what was going to happen.) I don’t know why I thought that – maybe I figured there would be a test – but I did, and I read the book several times, although I don’t think I understood any of it. (This is where I formulated Scott’s Law of the End Times: Jesus never comes back before your homework is due, so you may as well just sit down and do it.) I read some of Paul’s letters too, because I liked the way he turned a phrase, and, they were often short. I read some of the prophets, although Isaiah and Jeremiah were a little long to get through during one service. I read a lot of the Bible without ever trying to really understand it, without seeing it as a special book, without looking for verses to live by.

I had outlined this post as having four parts. Since I see that I’m only through with one of them, I’ll end here and post the rest later. In Parts II and III we’ll look at some of the common bad ways to use the Bible, and in Part IV I’ll explain what I think is the best method for Scripture reading.