When I was 10 years old, my dad was experiencing serious heart problems, so I became interested in death. I asked my sister-in-law if she had a Bible. The Bible and death were obvious connections to me as a kid because people always seemed to break out a Bible when someone was stuffed in a casket.
“He’s dead. What should we do with him now?”
“I dunno. Let’s get out that book about death.”
“Let’s see. ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’ Oh, okay, stick him in the ground.”
My sister-in-law came back with this black leather bound book with red-edged pages, and handed it to me. The Book had presence, baby. It was like a little toy judge. The Book seemed to say, “You won’t be reading me. I’ll be reading you.”
Folks, the pulpit isn’t for the preacher. As pastor Mark Driscoll has noted, the pulpit is for the Bible, because the Bible stands in authority above us all, even the preacher.
Well, like any book, I turned to the beginning and soon discovered this was not a good place for a 10-year-old kid to start reading the Bible, especially the King James Version. I read, oh, maybe three paragraphs before I closed the book, thinking to myself, Death is hard.
There is a saying in the comedy club world that death is easy, comedy is hard. But I’m guessing they never read a King James Bible. That Book can scare the comedy right out of you. (It’s recommended that comedians use the New International Version.)
Coming from a non-believing background, I am personally stunned by how many Christians don’t really believe the Bible or only believe it tongue-in-cheek, some rejecting it’s accuracy altogether. Read between the lines from these quotes of Emerging church leaders: “The Bible is still important to us,” and “The Bible is still the center for us.” Statements that have the ring of, “Just because I slept with another woman, that doesn’t mean I don’t love you, honey. You’re still important to me.”
The Bible is more than important. It’s more than the center. It’s the whole kit and caboodl.
Only people who actually believe the Bible are effective at helping others experience Jesus. I know, because my next experience with the Bible was during a Sunday school class that my mother volunteered to teach, because the main qualification for teaching Sunday school at this particular church was not being incarcerated.
“I’m on parole.”
“Good, as long as you scare the children. We just don’t want them damaging any more church property.”
Look, I love my mother, but since becoming a follower of Jesus as an adult, I can honestly look back and say that we were not a Christian family, as evidenced by my dad shooting the neighbor’s dog for barking. That’s not to say I didn’t have a wonderful childhood. I had a great childhood, very peaceful and quiet, certainly devoid of barking dogs.
My mother taught Sunday school during a period of my life when my parents had a slight concern for my moral education. And don’t think it unkind of me to say “slight concern,” because this is the kind of value system my mother taught me as a kid: “Once you tell a lie, you’d better stick to it.”
Of course, now we teach our daughter, “Don’t believe a word your grandma says.”
For Sunday school, my mother had us read from the book of Genesis in the King James Version. Then we were supposed to discuss what we read; but after three verses, two of the children had aneurisms, so we went straight to crafts.
This class full of prideful 9-year-old Sam Harris-like warts bombarded my poor mother: “Lady, are you trying to tell me I’m supposed to believe we all came from just two people?”
My mother thoughtfully tilted her head and then said something I will never soon forget:
“How would you like to make a paperweight with your picture in it?”
Thus concluded my childhood Bible training.
The Bible was written to tell the truth about Jesus. This is why the writers of the four Gospels are still the most popular foursome in history, outranking even the Beatles who placed second, followed by Notre Dame’s 1924 Four Horsemen backfield who “rank a distant third.”1 (The Monkees didn’t make the list.) All the books of the Bible point to Jesus. The Old Testament points to the coming of Messiah, and the New Testament points back to the Old Testament, saying, “See? They told you everything that was going to happen concerning Him.” The two books point back and forth at each other, and together they point straight at Jesus. In summary, you can’t diminish the Bible without diminishing Jesus.
If you find you’re embarrassed to call the Bible “The Word of God”, maybe your esteem for the Bible has slipped. For a while, I called the Bible “the Scriptures” because it sounded more mature and intelligent. The Bible just sounded so “B-i-b-l-e, that’s the book for me.” It sounded so Sunday school. It just had negative connotations to me, like Bible-thumper. I’m against thumping in general, let alone with a Bible. Sometimes I’ll call the Bible “the Biblioteque.” That’s kind of a cool word. (Biblioteque is a place where people who believe in the Bible go to dance.)
Call it what it is. It’s the Living Word of the Only Judge and King.
Tremble.
Baby Jesus is all growed up.
This article was taken from Thor Ramsey’s new book A Comedian’s Guide to Theology. To purchase Ramsey’s book click here.
Click Here to watch a clip of Ramsey’s comedy!
