I knew the book was special long before I knew why. It had been a Christmas gift from my parents back when I’d have chosen cars and trucks and guns and games. Yet there was, I sensed, something different about this boxed Book with its black leatherette cover. The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments Translated Out of the Original Tongues and with the Former Translations Diligently Compared and Revised. The Authorized King James Version, 1611, Red Letter Edition.
I was 9.
Over the years, I occasionally opened the box, but rarely read The Book—until much later. For some reason I can scarcely explain, I tossed the Bible in the car as I packed for a camping trip. That impulse led to my first startling experience of this Book “speaking to me.”
It was a crisp, late-summer night high in California’s Sierra Nevada, before a crackling campfire, alone, reading the entirety of Saint Matthew’s gospel in one sitting, as the sparks swirled into the sky and disappeared among stars so close. When I came to the betrayal, trial and crucifixion of Jesus, after so compelling a portrait of the man, suddenly, and despite the King James language, the story became personal. It seemed not so much a part of a book being read as a conversation being spoken. It was very much like being let in on a dreadful but exhilarating secret.
I realize it is not uncommon for a reader to be struck by an “aha!” moment at reading most anything—catching the meaning of something for the first time or seeing a concept in a new light. But this was different because the ideas were different. God, I knew, was letting me in on his thoughts.
In Print, In Person
In giving us the Bible, God has placed his secrets out in the open, down where we can reach them. Read them. And it does make sense to me, hearing these words I read as God’s words. Think about it: God loves us—he’s dramatically demonstrated that—so wouldn’t he choose to communicate with us somehow? Wouldn’t he want us to avoid exhausting speculation about what he’s like and who Jesus was and where evil came from? Wouldn’t he warn us if he saw we were in danger?
God knows life can be perplexing, at times even sickening. Wouldn’t he give us information so we could understand it and perspective so we could tolerate it?
God has expectations of us and has made promises to us. Wouldn’t he formalize things, put it all in writing like a contract?
Certainly God could communicate, warn, inform and promise privately, individually, personally, simultaneously, directly. He could have simply whispered his ideas in my mind, and yours, and his, and hers, and theirs all at once. He listens to millions of complex prayers simultaneously; why not talk his ideas into us, each of us, alone?
I have concluded there are some distinct advantages to receiving God’s secrets openly, in a book. The Book is objective. I can hold it, look at it, evaluate it, explain it. So can you. So can we, together. We can read it. Study it. We might come to different conclusions on the meaning of some phrase or idea, but we have a common source we can come back to: The Book.
Can you imagine, if we each claimed a private pipeline to God, how competitive we could become? Private “revelation” is so subjective. We might disagree sharply. Who would arbitrate? And by what standards? How could we judge the ideas that you say flow through your direct, private pipeline? Or the ideas that I say God gave me?
