Do You Have a Well-Worn Bible?
Charles Spurgeon once said, "A Bible that is falling apart usually belongs to someone who isn't."
I get the idea: if you've carefully read through the same Bible many times, marking it up and making it your own, the Scriptures have likely found their way into your soul.
To the degree that's true, I'm here to celebrate it. In Psalm 1, the Psalmist depicts a man who delights in God's word and puts it into practice. As a teenager and college student, I saw what that looked like, as I had many older mentors whose lives were tenderized by suffering and the Scriptures. Their godly, wise investment in my life continues to pay dividends.
Yet now, I'm not so sure that a well-worn Bible is as important to me.
Why?
Well, I see former pastors, who once appeared to be great champions of God's word, throw the Bible aside to pursue profitable but unethical ministry ventures. I've had my heart broken by the stories of other pastors who used their well-worn Bibles as props to build trust with their unwitting victims. I've observed how influencers take slick photos of their Bibles for inspirational social media posts.
If you have a well-worn Bible, do you make sure you bring it to church so people can notice its dilapidated state? At the heart level, what's the purpose of knocking your Bible around? Is it helping you become like Christ or getting you ahead at church?
And for everyone who maintains a crispy clean Bible, protected in a Bible carrier and stored in a glass case at home, again, why? It would do your soul good to scribble in the margins. Write out an angry prayer on a blank page. Cross out some commentary that you think is foolish!
Here’s my struggle: I prefer to read the Bible on my phone. It's convenient to have the same Bible with me wherever I am. Unfortunately, this makes it harder to show others how much I read it. Still, if I need to brag, it's pretty easy to show them a well-marked passage on my phone screen. So I've found some workarounds.
In addition, highlighting a passage is much easier than meditating on the words themselves. My heart says, 'As long as I mark these verses in yellow, that's sufficient. That's a good indicator that I noticed them, saw them as significant, and felt something spiritual.'
But what good is it to digitally mark all the words in the Bible — creating Carson's Yellow Highlighter Edition — and not have my heart renovated to love God and others?
It’s interesting how evangelicals created a culture so fixated on Bibles. But perhaps our resistance to say something critical about reading the Bible — I mean, c’mon, aren’t there bigger problems in the world? — has reduced our discernment about Bible reading. And in the long run, our uncritical (or hypocritical or abusive use of the Bible) will undermine reading the Bible.
So what about you? Is your Bible well-worn? In pristine condition? Somewhere in between?
What helps you encounter God's word — and what becomes a distraction?
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