Sigh.
I have a tough time with my Bible reading. Right now, it sits on my table, along side some bills that have been paid but are not filed away yet, a bunch of Disney pins that I haven't sorted through, and a few other various things.
In fact, to make it worse, there are two Bibles there. One is the one I use for church, the other is my copy of The Message, which is great for just reading. And neither have been opened in about two weeks. I'm a sad, sad Christian boy, but I'm guessing I'm not alone.
The Lovely Steph Leann and I have always struggled with this, and its hard to encourage each other when we don't do it ourselves.
So tonight, I'm goofing around on the interweb, some program on Investigative Discovery is on, I'm debating on whether to open up Roller Coaster Tycoon and kill a good three hour block of time, and I end up surfind headlines. I shoot through ESPN, then MSNBC.com, then Sports Illustrated online, then Fox News, then Drudge, then Entertainment Weekly, and finally CNN online. Amongst the headlines I looked at, I clicked on one that read "Blogger: Test Theory With Boobquake" Why? Because I don't have a clue what this story is even about, and I'm curious. It takes me a story of a Purdue coed who has a blog, and is calling for... well, it doesn't matter.
What caught my attention was that she is "a liberal, geeky, nerdy, scientific, perverted atheist feminist trapped in Indiana." Or so sayeth her profile. Her site is well done, if a little sad because of how passionate she is about the fact that she is an atheist... and then I see her links and I end up following the trail.
And it leads me to a site called Reading and Critically Reviewing the Bible in 365 Days. One glance at their posts lets me know that they are committed to this project, as there is at least one post for every day so far this year. Their own profile says, "I'm a Computer Science major at Purdue University. I'm an atheist, skeptic, humanist, oh and by the way, I read the bible every day."
Oh and by the way, I read the bible every day.
That line just cut me. Seriously. I mean, for whatever reason (though I'm sure I could come up with reasons) as I'm sitting here, that line just tore at my own heart.
Oh and by the way, I read the bible every day. I'm an atheist, and I read the bible to prove it wrong, and I'll bet I know it better than you do, dear Christ following friends.
There's a link on that page that takes you to the One Year Skeptic, a site that does the same thing. The author, who is named Erika, says she is an atheist who wants to read the Bible in one year.
Perhaps both authors are being led to read the Word, perhaps both will find some truth, some undeniable Truth in those red letters, but there is a little snarkiness and much skepticism in their words. Both authors take each verse on its own, without context of any verses around it, and rip it apart, asking rhetorical questions... every verse I see as Truth and approach it as such, they see as a jumbled mess and also approach it from their perspective.
And because there are at least two people out there--and I'm sure there are many, many more--who know more about God's written Word than I do, because they disbelief its truthiness as much as I believe it, that makes me... well, it makes me sad.
The commitment to blindness is so much stronger than my own commitment to the Light so apparent before me. And that makes me sad too.
I just thought I'd share.