I must confess that I am a bad Bible reader. Really lousy. I rarely read it, and rarely have read it. This is inexplicable and indefensible from a Christian point of view. But that's where I am. As Slate editor David Plotz points out, Evangelical Christians are pretty much the only ones who are generally devoted to deep, serious and sustained Bible reading. Plotz, a secular Jew, undertook to read the entire Bible, to see if he was missing anything. What he encountered didn't make a believer of him, but it changed him. He writes:
While reading the Bible, I often felt as if I had finally lifted a veil from my eyes. I learned that I hadn't known the true nature of God's conflict with Job, which is the ur-text of all subsequent discussions of obedience and faith. I realized I was ignorant of the story of Ruth. I was unaware of the radical theology of Ecclesiastes, the source of so many of our ideas about the good life. I didn't know who Jezebel was, or why we loathe her, or why she is the painted lady, or even that she was married to Ahab.Not to sound like a theocratic crank, but I'm actually shocked that students aren't compelled to read huge chunks of the Bible in high school and college, the way they must read Shakespeare or the Constitution or Mark Twain.
That's my intellectual defense of Bible reading. Now a more personal one. As a lax, non-Hebrew-speaking Jew, I spent my first 35 years roboting through religious rituals and incomprehensible prayers, honoring inexplicable holidays. None of it meant anything to me. Now it does. Reading the Bible has joined me to Jewish life in a way I never thought possible.
Plotz goes on to explain why finishing the Bible -- and he's talking about the Hebrew Bible, known to Christians as the Old Testament -- left him hopeless and angry about God. He wanted God, but he couldn't believe in the God of the Hebrew Bible. Still, he says the Bible left him with enough good questions to last a lifetime. And it has left him with a book of his own about his experience as a deracinated secular American encountering the book that shaped Western civilization.
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While I find all this interesting, and have read almost all the Bible at one point or another, it is important to keep things in perspective. Most Christians throughout history have been illiterate, they heard the Scripture but never read it. Even today I would not be surprised if a substantial number of Christians were illiterate. Proclamation of the Scriptures, prayer, faith and good works are more fundamental to Christian faith than "reading the Bible through." Is it a good practice, of course, but it is not the experience of most Christians in history.
I was raised Catholic. Was an alter boy. Wore the thing around my Neck with Mary on it. I can't think of the name. Somewhere along the way I developed a deep respect for the authority of the Bible. So I would go looking in the Bible for various things I knew from my Catholicism, like the Assumption of Mary, were the thing around my neck got its magic power, the Immaculate Conception.
Those things aren't in the Bible. What is in the Bible are the warnings not to knell down in front of images, not to make public display of ones prayer, dont harm children, dont have intercessors, don't call other men "father", etc..
So the contradictions gnawed at me into my teen years when eventually I decided that an organization that makes such claims for itself as the Roman Church does, it simply should not have the history that it does. So viewed its claim as being the primary church of God on earth to be illogical and I left the RCC and regard myself as non-denominational bible-believing Christian. I dont judge individual Catholics but the Church itself as an institution, I see responsible for a lot of damage to Christianity due to its abuses.
As I got older and would read various things in the Old Testament and notice their parallels to the New Testament, it just affirms my faith. As you dive deeper you notice so much in the Old Testament is foreshadowing Jesus. And you also see so many things in Judaism are deeply significant and yet almost totally unknown by Christians in America.. which I attribute to the dejudiization that the early RCC did.
I think my interest inthe Bible was sparked by finding "Late Great Planet Earth" in my house when I was a kid. (I was born in 74, my mom must have bought the book at some point, I think i found it in the early 80s).
It was fascinating reading Daniel and Revelation and trying to figure out what the puzzle was.
Today I regard most of what Hal Lindsey interpreted to be inaccurate. In the early 2000s I started to see Islam in the prophecies , not "Rome/Euopre/EU/America/NYC/UN".
With the insight of Walid Shoebat ,when I read Bible prophecy I actually skip Daniel and Revelation and read the rest of the OT. There is so much prophecy beyond Daniel. When you read the non-symbolic prophecies and recognize them for what they are, they are the guides to use to unlock the symbolic stuff in Daniel and Revelation. I think I have an extremely cohesive understanding of all the prophecies... I never had that before. But it all makes total sense to me now.
The fact that there is a State of Israel in the world today is really the authentication for me that the Bible is what it claims to be and that what it says had direct relevance to the world today and tomorrow.
I do always have my mind open to be convinced that I am wrong again, so I do look at things from different POVs to test mine. I think always challenging your assumptions is vital.
Hey, Bayesian,
I am not knocking what we've learned in the past 500 years - I'm saying that in terms of basic literacy or of becoming a literate person, one could do worse than to use those two sources - the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare.
A few years back, there was a TV news story on the origin of many common phrases, many of which seem quite "modern" but all of which turned out to originate either from the Bible or from Shakespeare.
I am a thorough-going secularist who had the same reaction as Sigaliris to the news Dreher has barely read the Bible. I was astounded, not say dismayed.
I can only assume that Dreher is in mystical communion with God--addresses Him with some frequency and then hears what God has to say in response. I assume, that is, that direct, ongoing revelation is a large part of the, or at least this, believer’s life. (I know from survey evidence that ignorance of the Bible is widespread among believers.)
How much can we know of God--his will for us each and all, his vision for society, his support and sustenance? I should think perhaps very little, with any high degree of certainty. What we hear from God might, after all, be corrupted in receipt by our own shortcomings and sinfulness, not to say our intellectual limitations, not to say by the sheer silence of God, as experienced even by Mother Theresa.
Reason as a route to the vicinity of God, since Hume and Kant, is generally acknowledged to be severely limited. (No proof, it’s all a matter of faith, we say.) Well, then, isn’t revelation where it’s at? And given the vagaries and inherent unreliability of individual communion with God, isn’t far and away the most important source of revelation, of knowledge, of God the Bible? How could any believer, any seeker after God’s guidance and solace and understanding, possibly not avail themselves of this singularly invaluable resource? I end where I began, astonished.
I have really valued the comments made in response to my comment! I think that my statement about not knowing anyone who read the Bible thoroughly and remained Catholic sounded like more of a dig than it was meant to - I wasn't trying to be dismissive or snarky. But the fact is, I do not know any Catholics personally who read the Bible regularly and in large chunks. I have in fact had one Catholic friend tell me that she doesn't read the Bible on her own because it makes her confused and anxious, and I had another Catholic tell me that he doesn't read the Bible on his own because he is afraid it will make him Protestant and he would rather just obey the Church!!! Now I KNOW these are just anecdotal, but they represent not only what I regularly encounter, and they also represent my own former attitude. But I willingly and happily acknowledge that many of you very may well read the Scriptures regularly and thoroughly and remain in your Catholic faith!
I do find John 6 very compelling and too easily explained away by Protestants. But then again, Catholics often easily dismiss other problematic passages. I have long given up on proof-texting, my current Reformed convictions are more big-picture and cannot be proven by a couple passages, any more than Catholicism can be proven by a few passages. So anyway, while I have significant doubts about the Catholic hierarhy, I do still believe in the Real Presence. Though I also have questions about explaining it so technically by the teaching of transubstantiation.
When I said I do not have all the answers, that was an honest admission rather than just lip-service. This admission will certainly be pounced on by some as a sign that I am misled and will eventually return to Catholicism (or Orthodoxy) if I keep seeking the truth. While I would never say never about where God will lead me, I do have serious objections to certain Catholic doctrines and practices which have nothing to do with the Eucharist and which I cannot simply overlook. I will not go into them here, because that would be hijacking this thread away from its original intent.
By the way, I also find the Protestant focus on the Pauline letters to be unbalanced, and my recommendations of Galatians and Romans probably made me seem to have the same bias. Personally, I have a deep love of the Old Testament and the Gospels, and I do not let my theology depend completely on Paul. And yet, as I am sure you would all agree, we cannot pit books of Scripture against one another, so you cannot dismiss Paul either. The Gospels are not somehow MORE inspired than Paul's letters, if indeed they are all equally the Word of God.
Anyway, I just want to reiterate my grief over the visible division of the Body of Christ, and I want to assert my belief in the very true, though unseen, complete unity of the Body of Christ. I know some Catholics may not share this view, but I do believe that no matter what church you belong to visibly, all believers are united in the One Body. Let's all pray for each other.
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