Do You Know?

I read an article the other day titled An Epidemic of Bible Illiteracy. The surprising part was it was not from unbelievers, it was in the group of people who claim to be Christians. The article is here. It's not too long, I suggest you take 2 minutes and check it out.

It's been obvious for a long time that society in general is less Christian-oriented. So it's not too surprising to hear about people who grew up without attending to church to be unsure what the Bible says. There are also a lot of misconceptions in comic strips and articles on the web about what Bible does and does not say. I've seen situations where something about the Bible was said in complete and total sarcasm and satire, but people have taken it for the gospel truth.  That leads to some really unique beliefs when you think the Bible says the exact opposite of what it actually says.

We've relegated groups of people to take care of things in our lives. Most of us don't scour the Internet for independent news sources; we flick on the TV and watch the station of choice. Most of us don't watch every game in our sport of choice; we rely on ESPN to summarize the day in sports for us. Many of us don't even like to read books anymore; we'll wait for the movie to come out. So it's not surprising that many of us don't read the Bible; we rely on the pastor to find the important parts and let us know about it. It's not a good way to be knowledgeable about the source. I have a pretty good pastor and I like his sermons, yet I would have a hard time telling you what he preached about 3 or 4 weeks ago. But I still can remember books I've read years ago. When you've discovered the knowledge yourself, it sticks in your brain better.

We also don't read the Book anymore, we simply search it. It's so much easier to just type a key word into our fav Bible app and be given a whole bunch of texts on the subject than it is to actually read the book and remember what it says. It's much harder to understand the context and determine how to apply the knowledge to our immediate situation when you are looking at a list of random Bible texts that match a key word. So we often take individual texts out of context because it popped up on our Bible app, it's God's word, so I must be using it correctly. I'm quite sure that's not the best way to do it.

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3:16

Hopefully we aren't just relying on the pastor to give us our weekly dose of the Bible, but we are reading it and studying it for ourselves. 

Do you know what God's word says? That's worth pondering about...