A Young Man Reading His Bible

A young man, neatly dressed, suit and tie, hair combed back tightly, on the Red Line to downtown, reading his Bible ... from the look of it, somewhere in the Minor Prophets.

He was so ernest, so intent ... yet I felt a great sadness for him ... wondering if anyone with any skill or knowledge was guiding him.

When the Ethiopian Eunuch was reading the Bible on his way home, God sent Stephen to him, to help. The man confessed he didn’t understand what he was reading, and Stephen provided guidance.Individual Bible reading is a good thing, if one knows how to read it, much like reading any piece of literature.

One simply doesn't pick up Plato and start to read ... or if one does, sooner or later, at the very least, some googling will be in order. And perhaps consulting with others, or enrolling in school.

Whether it be the Gideons and their "miracle stories" about the man in the hotel room, ready to take his own life, but at the last minute, reading a Gideon Bible and turning to God for help ... or any of the miracle stories told by evangelicals on TV and radio and pulpit, people are set up for a spiritual crash. Much like telling an adolescent to get behind the wheel of a car and jut go - God will guide you.

Whether it be Augustin or Calvin, St. Teresa or Mother Teresa, the spiritual life requires community, and never a community of ignorance, but a community of learning, scholarship, study and reflection.


"Put a bunch of cabbage heads together and all you get is slaw" is true enough for so much of evangelicalism ... no wonder things get so crazy as parents who "trust the LORD" let their little baby die because they don't believe in doctors.

Or a 19-year old boy is beaten to death by his parents and others who wanted him to confess his sins, whatever that means.

Such hideous perversions emerge out of the cloud of ignorance, a miasma of death hanging over all of it, where good is bad and bad is good - a world turned totally inside out and upside down, a world always isolated from the larger currents of religion and culture.

I wonder what will happen to that ernest young man on the train reading his Bible?

Will he find someone to guide him to maturity of faith? Or will he slip into some hideous realm of hyper-legalism and violence?

I hope not.

But history makes it painfully clear that when isolated from the large and refreshing streams of Christianity and human culture, even the clearest water soon grows murky and fetid.