Since the name of my blog implies that I am supposed to be honest with you, I have a confession to make: I used to hate the Bible. Hated it. This didn’t happen when I was a kid because I loved it then. I was infatuated with all the Bible stories of Noah’s Ark, Moses in Egypt, and Daniel in the Lion’s Den. Throw in some Jesus and His miracles, and I was a happy kid. But as I got into my teenage years something started to happen, a change began to occur inside of me toward the Bible.
I don’t know exactly when it happened (maybe it was 9th or 10th grade), but the once loved book for me began to be not so cool. When I went to my youth group I never brought my Bible – absolutely never. The constant messages from the Word by my youth pastor went in one ear and out the other. It probably wouldn’t have mattered if the Apostle Paul or even Jesus Himself showed up on a Wednesday night to teach, I wasn’t having it. All I cared about on youth group nights was for the message to end and for our group to play games or go to someone’s house for an after-church activity.
So what happened to me? Why the sudden drastic change? I think I have focused the problem down to three main issues for me. Maybe you are experiencing the same thing I did and maybe you’re not. Whatever the case may be, I want you to know that even though I am now a Bible junky I used to be so unspiritual as to almost be considered a pagan. And now, without further adieu, let me tell you why my feelings toward the Bible changed:
Reason #1 –Not As Many Bible Stories
Ever wonder why the majority of lessons for children are in storybook fashion? Because that’s about the best their young minds can handle. Their intellect isn’t ready for the deeper theological truths and doctrine. But faithful teachers of God’s Word relay to them the famous stories of the Bible to set the table for the lives later in the future. That way when they begin to hear doctrine such as The Holiness of God, they can begin to understand what God meant when He told Moses to remove his sandals from a place that was considered by God to be holy. Or going back to the flood narrative, they begin to see the Mercy of God with more clarity.
But when I got to 9th grade there were no more stories. I always did well in school so it was not as though my mind couldn’t handle it. The problem was that spiritually I was still an infant, needing spiritual milk and not able to handle meat. I started to dislike the Bible as I got older because I didn’t know what to do with the majority of the New Testament books, books that had little to no narrative in them. What was I supposed to do with Galatians or Ephesians? How could I ever sit through a reading of Romans? This would have been the same as giving an infant prime rib – it would have been overload. To compound the issue, I found that not all of the books in the Old Testament were pure narrative books either. I found Proverbs and Ecclesiastes to be absolutely boring; the majority of Isaiah and Jeremiah to be snooze fests; and almost all the Psalms to be lame, except for Psalm 23 which every Christian kid memorizes.
As I peered deeper into the Bible and found this to be true in both Testaments I started to cringe because I knew I was growing up, but I still wanted only stories and nothing else. Now that I had to move on to other stuff in the Bible I didn’t like it and decided to bring it less and less to church until I never brought it at all.
Reason #2 – Boring Teachers
Look, I’m just being Frank with you. I know those people who were teaching Sunday school during my day were only trying to serve, but some of them were just flat out boring, so boring in fact that I started wearing watches to Sunday school so I could count down the minutes until class let out. I Corinthians 12 says that not all Christians have the same spiritual gifts. That means that not everyone is gifted to be a pastor; and not everyone is gifted to be a teacher. When it comes to teaching it is as a very good friend of mine (who is a high school principal and responsible for hiring qualified, skilled teachers) once said: “You either got it or you don’t.” And when it came to my Bible teachers they just didn’t have it.
Not only did they not have it, but I hardly ever saw any enthusiasm. It was as though we were the less important part of the church, and they were filling time by teaching us until they were offered a better ministry opportunity. We could always spot those teachers who studied their lesson the morning of or even the night before - the ones always looking at the teacher’s lesson the whole time they taught. We used to laugh amongst ourselves and say that if that’s all it took we could teach the lesson.
It may sound sad, but I honestly cannot remember one teacher (except one) who genuinely looked excited to be there as one who had the opportunity to teach the very Words of God to the next generation. I can honestly say, and again this is no disrespect to them, that through the course of my middle school years I began to develop a hardness toward the Bible because of the way it was being taught to me. I really thought that if that is what an adult looks like after studying this book, then it must not be that good. Sorry to say it, but it’s true.
Reason #3 – It Couldn’t Compete with Sports, Girls, and Friends
Now this reason in and of itself wouldn’t necessarily cause someone to hate the Bible; rather, it would just cause someone to like it less than the other cool things in their life. So what about sports, friends, and girls made me hate the Bible? I guess the answer is guilt. People would often say to me, “Well if you read your Bible as much as you play basketball” or “If you memorized Scripture like you memorize your favorite rap songs…” And each time they said it I knew they were right. However, these other things offered me instant gratification, a sense of challenge and victory, acceptance and love. How could the Bible ever compete with that? For me, it just couldn’t. And so, every time someone wanted to guilt trip me into reading the Bible I would try it only to discover that I’d much rather be playing ball or hanging out with my friends. The guilt ensued and my hatred
Not wanting the guilty feelings anymore, I chucked my Bible to the wayside and left it closed for my entire high school years, only opening it when I was forced and never opening it by myself to see what the living God of the universe had to say.
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When I look back now and consider the contributing factors that led to my hatred of the Bible I realize that they are not very good reasons at all. But I was very immature, irrational, and hasty then and made decisions on mere appearances only (John 7:24).
So why am I writing all this? I am putting this truth from my life down into words because I see students like me walking around our youth group all the time, students claiming to love God but abandoning His Word for a thousand other reasons, reasons which 99% of the time are just excuses covering up the real, ugly truth: they hate the Bible too but aren’t willing to admit it.
Next week I am going to write to you and tell you when and how my hatred toward the Bible changed into an absolute love. Now, I cannot get enough of the Bible, and it is my most treasured possession other than our Lord Jesus Christ.
So, until then you’ll just have to wait. And I know this article may have been a bit extreme, but…
I’m just being Frank with you…
Pastor Frank
