Most Evangelicals claim to be “people of the book.” The first church I worked for in the late 70s had an advertising sign located at a member’s home on Route 15 that said, “The Blood, the Book, and the Blessed Hope.” Park in front of a local Catholic church or a mainline congregation and observe how few members carry their Bibles to church. Do the same at a local Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) and you will see that MOST members, including children, bring their (KJV) Bibles to church. Granted, after church, many of those Bibles will be returned to the front dash, back window, or underneath the seats of their automobiles. Some members “store” their Bibles in their car trunks — safe and secure, ready for the next Sunday.
What most members DON’T do is regularly read/study the Bible. In fact, most Evangelicals haven’t read the Bible through once, yet they are “people of the Book?” Sure, buddy, sure. Imagine if I said I was a follower and worshipper of Harry Potter, the greatest wizard of all time, yet when asked if I had read all seven books in the Harry Potter series, I reply, “I only read book one and book four.” How could I be a follower and worshipper of Harry Potter and not read all seven books? Yet, hundreds of millions of people claim to be Christians without ever reading the Bible from cover to cover. If the Bible is THE book above all other books, and different from them in every possible way as the inspired, inerrant, and infallible Word of God, why do most Christians rarely read the Bible, and fewer still read from table of contents through concordance? The Bible commands Christians to judge others by their fruit (good works). Based on countless surveys and studies, Evangelicals may claim to be “people of the Book, but they are largely ignorant of what it says. And that includes more than a few preachers who do little, if any, Bible reading/study outside of preparation for their sermons. Worse, some preachers don’t read or study the Bible for their sermons either. Instead, they buy books of sermons or rip off sermons preached by big-name preachers. There’s no time for the Word of God when you have golf matches to play, hunting trips to take, and conferences and meetings to attend.
As a former Evangelical preacher, I worked my ass off ministering to church members and community residents. But, I never sacrificed my reading and study of the Bible, typically spending twenty hours a week preparing my sermons and reading devotionally. I was always troubled by colleagues in the ministry who were lazy, indifferent to the needs of others, and spent more time on entertainment and “family time” than they did on the actual, God-ordained work of the ministry.
Here’s the most dangerous thing Evangelicals can do: READ THE BIBLE FROM COVER TO COVER. Take every book of the Bible as written. The Bible is not a univocal text. Careful readers of the Bible will quickly learn that it contradicts itself, justifies immoral behavior, and is littered with mistakes and errors. BY all means, consult interlinears, concordances, and other text tools, but avoid books written by Evangelical authors. Their goal is to indoctrinate and condition, rather than impart knowledge and understanding.
If Evangelicals truly become “people of the book,” it is likely they will stop being Evangelicals after reading and studying ALL OF THE BIBLE. Many of the Evangelicals-turned-atheists I know deconverted after reading the Bible. I encourage every Evangelical to read the Bible. Every book, every chapter, every verse, and every word. Don’t listen to your pastor. Remember, he has a job and salary to protect. Don’t rely on Evangelical apologists or devotional books. Use your mind, pondering what the text actually says. You will find that many Evangelical preachers play loose with the Biblical text, using it as proof for peculiar beliefs and dogmas. Have you ever heard your pastor claim that there are numerous prophecies about Jesus (the Messiah)? Most church members give a shout-out to Jesus without ever investigating whether their pastor’s claims are true. They aren’t.
To my Evangelical readers, I say, please read the Bible. All of it. I guarantee you that if you will do this, your life will dramatically change. Granted, you may become an agnostic or an atheist, but you will, at the very least, have truth on your side. You will no longer govern your lives based on what is uttered from the pulpit. You will no longer have a “borrowed” theology. Most preachers enter the ministry with a borrowed theology, and unless they do the necessary hard work in the study, they will never mature intellectually. And if they won’t do what’s necessary to be an educated man of God, their parishioners will remain stupid and ignorant too.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Yes. To anyone reading this who believes the Bible: please, read the Bible. So many Christians have never read the book from cover to cover. They have no idea of the magnitude of the antiquated laws, the endless rants of the prophets, or even the controversial and often ignored teachings of the New Testament. If they would only read the book, they might discover that it is not a marvelous divine revelation on how to live life, but rather a collection of both worthwhile ideas and incoherent passages that, taken as a whole, cannot be defended intelligently.
Many atheists have said that nothing opened their minds to skepticism about the Bible more than actually reading it.
Imagine being madly in love with someone who is out of town but has written you a book—personally—telling you everything they think is important for you to know. Now imagine leaving that book closed as you go through life, completely unaware of what it says. That’s what it’s like to claim belief in the Bible without ever actually reading it.
Most Christians don’t want to openly admit that the Bible can be unequivocally boring, horrifying in places, and often evoking a WTF response from readers. Many evangelicals are taught to revere the Bible, as they believe it is the inspired, inerrant, literally factual Word of God. How dare we mere mortal human sinners critique the Words of God!
But…..it’s pretty awful. Maybe it gets one star, but certainly not 5 stars.
Bruce, I am guilty, when I was 14 (or was it 15) and got saved at Camp-O-The Pines, sponsored by Pensacola Christian school, I did make an earnest attempt. I am proud to say I did make it through the new testament but
surrendered about a quarter way through the old testament.
That’s as far as I ever got, outside of Sunday School and Home “bible studies”.
So, guilty as charged.
In terms of understanding? My early attempt was with a KJV, heck I had no idea of what I was reading, much less connecting the dots.
I have, recently, leaned heavily on Bart Ehrman and a few other biblical scholars, tackling the subject from a secular perspective.
The old testament is a horror show. Literally. God is one mean you know what on that side of the bible.
I found other authors such as Carl Sagan, (A personal hero), Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Noam Chomsky to offer a more enlightening and realistic take of the world I was and am observing around me.
When I traveled for a living, I spent a lot of nights in motels with a lot of Gideon Bibles to read. Eventually I read from front to back. Yes, the immorality, violence, brutality, cruelty, incest, irrationality and contradictions jumped out at me. I thought maybe I’d understand the mysteries in time, just as I eventually understood what I memorized to get through college. Much I studied in College was understood once applied in real life. Quite the opposite happened with my admittedly casual Bible study. Time and life experience only made the Bible seem less comprehensible and the contradictions and lack of coherence became less tolerable to my sense of reason.
In my travels I found myself in a motel in a Mormon community in Illinois and there I found The Book of Mormon and an invitation to take it with me. Having never seen a book I didn’t want to read,, I gladly took it and eventually read much of it finding it as difficult to rationalize as teh Bible. Just as Bruce says, the reading of these books and thinking about what I read, as much as anything, made me a skeptic of Christianity and of religion writ large, I challenge any thinking person to actually read these books without concluding, as I did, they are incoherent works of literature, at best loosely based on legends passed down in oral histories and as such essentially fictional.