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Introduction
Visiting Canadian Yearly Meeting in 1982 was a wonderfully eye-opening experience for me. Among other things, I was fascinated by their schedule - they are still the only yearly meeting of which I am aware that schedules general interest events to begin at midnight! These Friends had traveled as much as 3,000 miles to be together, and they were not about to waste a minute; they could sleep next week!
I was taking a short walk one afternoon during a break in the formal sessions, my bible under my arm as usual, when a twenty-something Canadian Friend approached me and struck up a conversation. After some preliminary greetings she got to the point. Pointing to my Bible, she asked, “Why do you still read that old thing when there is so much more modern material available?”
I was caught short by the question, and constructed an incomplete answer on the spot. I’ve been answering that same question, in many forms, for the fourteen years or so since that day. Tonight I can give you a progress report
Asking this Canadian Friend’s question, as so many other Friends do, in one form or another, implies that the questioner has made some assumptions about the Bible and those who read it: the Bible is old and therefore out of date, not historically accurate, full of violence, oppresses women, contradicts itself, etc., etc.; and those who read the Bible believe it is literally, historically and factually true in every detail. Like many of our assumptions about people and things we don’t know well, these are only half true at most.
What does seem to me to be completely true is that a Christian life and the Bible go hand in hand. Ignoring the Bible is like trying to go through life unable to remember anything that happened before today.
The Bible is not documentary history, as contemporary Western-educated people understand history.
It is larger than mere history, because it connects us with the Big Story - God’s cosmic story
that incorporates all of creation and that gives our individual lives and personal stories true
meaning.
Last Modified: 5.4.03