Don’t just throw the Book at them

MICHELE MARR

A number of years ago, I read a column in an Orange County newspaper

that told the story of man who, grieving for his murdered daughter,

found comfort in Psalm 23. The columnist, however, referred to it as

the Lord’s Prayer.

Shortly after that, I came across an essay written by author

Frederica Mathewes-Green. It told how, while reading an essay on the

virtue of hope in what she called a “high-brow magazine,” she came

across a Bible blooper. The essay’s author told readers that, as a

virtue, hope was on par with those of faith and love mentioned in the

23rd Psalm.

The Scripture the essayist was thinking about is 1 Corinthians

13:13: “For now there are faith, hope, and love. But of these three,

the greatest is love.”

Mathewes-Green puzzled in her essay about how this biblical goof

got past not only the author, but also, more than likely, a

fact-checker, a copy editor and an editor.

Surveys, conducted by pollsters George Gallup and George Barna for

more than a decade, have continually documented our nation’s Biblical

illiteracy. Their findings have been so astonishing at times, they

have been fodder for late-night comedians. The stories of how Jay

Leno once posed a Bible challenge to his studio audience and again to

young people in “man-on-the-street” interviews are legendary.

“Name one of the Ten Commandments,” Leno directed.

“God helps those who help themselves?” someone in the audience

said.

“Name one of the apostles,” Leno tested.

No one ventured a guess.

On the street, he asked two young women, “Can you name one of the

Ten Commandments?”

And one of them queried back, “Freedom of speech?”

When the comedian asked a young man if he knew, according to the

Bible, who was eaten by a whale, the ready response was “Pinocchio.”

According to Gallup, “We revere the Bible, but we don’t read it.”

Yet we continue to cite it to bolster our points of view.

Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie did it famously in their song,

“We Are the World.” The song’s lyrics include this line: “As God has

shown us by turning stones to bread.” But the songwriters have the

story turned upside down.

The gospels of Matthew, Luke and, more briefly, Mark tell of how

Satan tempted Jesus after a long fast. “If you are God’s Son, tell

these stones to turn into bread,” he taunted. But Jesus resists the

devil’s temptation; He never turns a stone into bread.

Bill Clinton relied on Scripture when, in his 1988 acceptance

speech, he told the nation, “Scripture says, our eyes have not yet

seen, nor our ears heard, nor our minds imagined what we can build.”

What 1 Corinthians 2:9 does say is this: “Eye has not seen, nor

ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which

God has prepared for those who love him.”

It’s not talking about what humanity can build. It’s talking about

things God has prepared, which are so far beyond anything humankind

can envision.

In a recent commentary about our collective religious illiteracy,

Stephen Prothero, the author of “American Jesus: How the Son of God

Became a National Icon,” laments that our nation is one that

“believes God speaks in Scripture but that can’t be bothered to read

what He has to say.”

He recounts how, in the Civil War era, “all races and all classes”

could grasp a debate drawn on the story of a runaway slave in the New

Testament or the Old Testament jubilee year when slaves could be set

free.

Now, he says, “It is a rare American who can engage with any

sophistication in Biblically inflected arguments about gay marriage,

abortion or stem cell research.”

It’s a shame, the blame for which Prothero lays in part on the

doorsteps of churches and synagogues, but mostly he unloads it on our

elementary and secondary schools, not because they don’t teach

religion, but because they do not teach comparative religions.

Whoever, or whatever, is to blame, simply assigning blame isn’t

going to fix it.

In her essay, Mathewes-Green suggested we cure our “fuzzy memory”

by reading a chapter of the Bible each night. Prothero, who believes

Americans, “both the religious and secular variety,” live in an age

when we “need to understand religion,” proposes that we resolve, in

2005, to read for ourselves “either the Bible or the Koran (or

both).”

I’d like to second those motions. If we are going to stand on

Scripture, or reject it, let’s know what we are talking about. Let’s

learn the difference between Psalm 23, the Lord’s Prayer and 1

Corinthians -- and then some.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at [email protected].