I didn’t know how to respond. I had spent most of my young life avoiding letting people know just how well I knew the Bible. In thousands of veiled and unveiled ways, it had been clear to me that having spent evenings and weekends reading, studying, and memorizing the Bible made me odd. Yet here was the secular cool kid I’d envied my whole life, having reached the logical end point of his educational career, looking longingly back at me.
I was odd, yes, but odd in a way that was needed. A colleague of mine studied for his Ph.D. under renowned deconstructionist scholar Jacques Derrida. He recalled that each year when Derrida taught, he spent lots of time covering the biblical literature. When asked why, Derrida’s response echoed my cigarette break revelation: If they don’t know the Bible, they won’t know much.
The lack of biblical literacy has been catalogued by various polling firms and lamented from countless pulpits (or at least at pastor support groups), but no one is cataloguing the emptiness of a culture without a sacred rock at its foundation. It isn’t catalogued because it isn’t quantifiable.
Why Even Non-Christians Lose From Growing Ignorance About The Bible
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose
I was odd, yes, but odd in a way that was needed. A colleague of mine studied for his Ph.D. under renowned deconstructionist scholar Jacques Derrida. He recalled that each year when Derrida taught, he spent lots of time covering the biblical literature. When asked why, Derrida’s response echoed my cigarette break revelation: If they don’t know the Bible, they won’t know much.
The lack of biblical literacy has been catalogued by various polling firms and lamented from countless pulpits (or at least at pastor support groups), but no one is cataloguing the emptiness of a culture without a sacred rock at its foundation. It isn’t catalogued because it isn’t quantifiable.
Why Even Non-Christians Lose From Growing Ignorance About The Bible
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose