Are You Bible-starved?

Almost all the world is. Some people never wake up to this fact. Some do. In Scotland’s national newspaper, the Daily Record, for September 17, 1955, Robert McMahon, in the weekly feature “A Faith for Saturday,” asks the question: “Why has the Book closed?” He answers: “A minister in Perth complains bitterly that other ministers know as little about church business procedure as they do about the Bible. He throws out the second part of his charge with the confidence of a man who knows he cannot be contradicted. And how right he no doubt is. At the same time as (a) the Church has grown progressively weaker, (b) the Bible has become less and less read in Scotland. And it occurs to me that (a) may be more the consequence of (b) than the other way about.

“I can speak with authority on this, for I must count myself among the great Bible-less multitude, in the sense that I find myself sear and yellow with hardly any grasp of the Book’s contents—and to tell the truth, I’ve only recently recognized the fact. . . . But if ministers are themselves in almost as great ignorance of the Bible as the rest, who is going to lead the blind? . . . I look at the titles of the books in the second half of the Old Testament and realize that I’ve never read more than snippets. And, of course, a difficult New Testament book like Revelation is best left alone—ministers do that all right. . . . We are Bible-starved.”

Jesus called the religious leaders of his day “blind guides.” The Son of God then drew the only logical conclusion: “If, then, a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit.”—Matt. 15:14, NW.