My Life with the Bible

This last week or so I've been super excited about my Bible, not my iPhone Mantis App (which is an amazing App Gabe showed me; well worth the money), nor my favorite online Bible found at www.biblegateway.com. No, I've been excited about my (second) good-ole, black, leather-bound slimline with the center reference column. When I walked in the house with it a few nights ago April's eyes widened and she said, "Hey, you've got your Bible." She knows the whole story of me and the Bible and completely understands the significance of such a thing. The story of my life with the Holy Book is a long dramatic, narrative, complete with peaks and valleys, awards and tragedies. As I mentioned in a previous post, for several years now, I haven't really been interested. Or maybe it's more that I was just completely burned out. Whatever the case, God has renewed my hunger. 


Part of the returning excitement is no doubt sparked by reading Nee again, as well as Boyd's books, especially Present Perfect. With every page of that one I can feel God's heart beat with Love for me. It's the same for the Bible -- when we read it that way at least. I've also been surrounded by loving brothers and sisters the last few years, all of whom are so incredibly patient with me. I just know they must be filled with the Holy Spirit. No one could "bear with one another" like they do if God were not with them. But mostly it's just God's prefect timing, and His wondrous ways of drawing us near, season after season of our great Life in Christ. The Bible is just the same story of God's perfect love, told by dozens of folks over hundreds of years. Now, God sends these precious words to me once again and they taste so sweet - like a hand-dipped, chocolate strawberry.


I grew up in a "Bible" country, in the "Bible-Belt," in a Bible believing church. The Bible was to my life what fried chicken is to a Sunday afternoon pot-luck -- always there. The great motto of my denomination, passed down from the 1800's, is "Speak where the Bible speaks and be silent where the Bible is silent." That mission statement was the catalyst for hundreds of schisms and divisions, all in just a few short decades. There were One-Cuppers, All Cuppers, Instrumental, Non-instrumental, KJV only, and KJV excluded. There were splits over which Hymnals to use, whether to have one or two Sunday morning services, whether to install stained glass, or whether or not to attach the "Family Life Center" to the auditorium building (long story). The Book of Acts was the "blue-print," Elders where the authority, and change was from the Devil. I could on. Right in the middle of this multiplying mess were the scriptures. The Bible was the book. As important to "establishing" a church as the Constitution was to establishing the United States of America, the Bible was THE book. The careful interpretation of the text determined the "pattern" for establishing traditions, setting them in stone, and calling them sacred. And you don't question that which has been established by the careful examination of learn-ed men with strings of letters behind their names. Enter ambitious, young, visionary, teenage, know-it-all, David. 


I got in trouble as early as I can remember. I couldn't help it. I questioned things; it was (and is -- sorry friends) just part of my nature. For example, at 15, having studied the Bible some for myself, I found some bits of scripture which seemed (to me) to suggest God not only approved of instruments in conjunction with worship but that HE, the Almighty, actually owned those instruments used to praise Him. 


"The priests took their positions, as did the Levites with the LORD’s musical instruments, which King David had made for praising the LORD and which were used when he gave thanks, saying, 'His love endures forever.'" -1 Chronicles 7:6

Cool!! But when I pointed this passage out to one of my scriptural superiors, along with the bit about God being the "same yesterday, today, and forever," I got grey-listed! (Later I would become black-listed, but that would take several years, into my twenties.) That's right, I was put on that naughty list and I knew it. But I was so involved with VBS and Bus-running, and Church-camping, and devo-leading, that I was ok. Little did I know those seeds of doubt -- not in God, but in the role of the Bible in the church -- would grow and grow until one day they threatened to choke the livin' daylights out of me. I was messed up inside, although I was loved all across campus. Age 26, straight A's in Greek, co-founder of the largest Christian club, and destined for gospel greatness... I guess. But it was eating me up inside. The Bible was becoming a foggy mess of miss-applied power. What I read didn't match what I could see. And what I could see was mostly chaos. 


Then one day my favorite, leather-bound, full-of-notes, worn out, always with me, like a faithful Black Lab Bible was lost forever. It was a freak moment of my own forgetfulness. And it was gone. Maybe I would be as well. 


...to be continued