I can’t count all the Bibles in my house; they’re upright and horizontal on shelves, displayed flat on tables (at the proper angles, of course), and stacked in boxes. And then there is that software program on my laptop. And the app that pops up scripture verses on my cell phone.
Which Bible do you
read?
Is it the one your mother gave you when you were six, or the one your church
gave to you when you graduated from high school? Is it the weird version you
bought to prove how enlightened you were at 14? Maybe it’s the white Bible you
carried down the aisle? (Nah, can’t read that one; it might get dirty.) Or maybe
it’s your husband’s great-grandmother’s Bible that contains the dates of family
marriages and births way back when—the one with the pages so brittle that you’re
afraid to open it.
Do you have a special
Bible?
Nearly four decades ago, an
aunt presented me with an important gift, my paternal grandfather’s Bible. Rebound and sporting a brand-new cover with his name engraved in gold letters
and looking painfully unused, this Bible has been open maybe twice since it
arrived in my house. Quite a contrast to the frequency of its earlier use when
this sometimes-itinerant Methodist minister used it for studying and preaching.
But now it looks good—if somewhat out of place—closed tight on an antique desk
with other collections. (It’s also proof that he wins the Most Unwieldy Name
Contest: Rev. Thaddeus Bedolia Barrow.)
Which version do you
prefer?
As a child who was
forced/bribed (I just had to get those stars on my chart!) to memorize verses
from the KJV, I now miss the sometimes arcane words and poetic phrasings from
1600s England whenever the minister reads a “modern” and more accurately
translated version. Somehow the old just sounds better than the new. Does
it bother you that the minister sometimes reads one version and the pew Bible is
another version and a child trying to learn to read can’t follow along because
his Bible has different words? I remember the bafflement in the eyes of two
young sons and then two young grandsons when the words just didn’t match.
(And we, as a church, still haven’t solved that version problem, but we have worked on the politically correct word problem. The politically correct word solution is now in effect in our hymnal. You should thank me for not getting started with my opinions about all the substitutions for “him” and “man” and “mankind” that are now in our official songbook. You know, those changes that make you flinch when you sing the “wrong” words because you’re OLD! Oh, this paragraph is off-topic. Sorry. I added parentheses to show that I KNOW this rambling is off-topic. But I’m not going to delete it.)
When I was teaching the high school Sunday School class, I bought a parallel Bible, with four different versions on a two-page spread. That was helpful in studying and preparing to teach a class but not particularly helpful in reading for inspiration. My current Bible, which is in a nice-looking multi-colored carrying case with a handle--a totally necessary accessory--is titled The New Oxford Annotated Bible and copyrighted 1991. It is also labeled New Revised Standard Version. I’m already confused. So which one is it? This Bible is a mess: underlining on most pages, untidy margin notes, and church programs haphazardly stuffed between pages with almost undecipherable thoughts scrawled everywhere. Guess I’ll just get a new Bible and start over—if I can figure out which version I need.
What is your most
overwhelming experience with a Bible?
Mine was not an emotional, heart-warming experience. It was when I tore out two
pages from our pulpit Bible. Yep. Read that again. Wait, I’ll do it for you: I
tore out two pages from our pulpit Bible. This devastating memory goes all the
way back to the early 70s. Someone called early one Saturday morning to summon
me to the church to clean up after a break-in. Entering through the broken door
in the Sunday School wing, about six of us found some disturbing scenes, some
that still pop up in my head occasionally. The crib mattresses in the nursery
had been slashed by knives, and the blackboards in the children’s rooms were
filled with obscenities. Anti-church and anti-government obscenities. In the
sanctuary, the US and Christian flags, dirty with footprints, were on the floor,
and the flagpoles were in pieces throughout the room. The metal cross on the
Christian flag had been snapped off and thrown under the back pew. The next stop
on the horror show was the pulpit. The large, treasured, and very old pulpit
Bible was open, and piled on a page was, well, to say it carefully, a big pile
of dog mess.
Because there were problems throughout the church, we divided up responsibilities. I was assigned to the sanctuary. To our dismay, my partner and I found that the moisture had thoroughly soaked two pages of the Bible and stained two others. Although we brainstormed frantically and cleaned carefully for an agonizing time, we knew the stain--and the smell--had totally ruined the two pages. Neither of us wanted to tear them out, but I finally performed that near-sacrilegious act. And put them in the trash bag. That was very traumatic for me, but I felt a little better after we glued the broken cross back on the top of the Christian flagpole. The crack was visible only from a close-up view, and we gratefully celebrated that the flagpole was in the almost-good-as-new category.
I was teaching the adult Sunday School class at the time and incorporated the topic of the vandalism into the lesson the next day. We talked about our responsibility to pray for others, and then I asked the class how they felt about praying for the vandals. First, there was total silence. For a long time. Then, there were halting comments expressing feelings we weren’t proud of. We wound up having to pray for us, because we simply were not able to pray for the vandals. We were angry. We didn’t want them to be forgiven; we just wanted them caught and punished! That feeling, shared by all present, was--and is--very disturbing to me. Even more disturbing than the memory of tearing out those pages.
And that disturbing feeling could be the subject for another post.
