Why I love the Bible

A Christian Science perspective: The spiritual lessons gleaned from the Bible bless us today.

This week I am spending some special time cherishing a dear friend. It is National Bible Week – a time designated to encourage reading what has often been referred to as a companion, friend, and guide in life.

My love for the Bible started early in my childhood. As soon as I learned to read, I was given a book of Bible stories for children. Those stories of people being helped out of extreme difficulties by a divine influence and intelligence they called the one God and Father (see I Corinthians 8:6) soon became my favorite book. It showed me there is hope to overcome whatever adverse situations confront us.

The Bible wasn’t a childish vehicle of escapism for me. During challenges in my early life, caused by my parents’ divorce, I could see that the spiritual encounters of Noah, Moses, Daniel, Ruth, and others were teaching me something – that I, too, had the love of God, the Father, always near me, to guide and protect me. I was inspired by their trust in God as good and the blessings He brought them. Mostly I was impressed by their growing understanding of God.

Following their lead, I learned to listen for God’s direction in my life, too, trying to pray to God as they did – to “trust in the Lord with all thine heart” as the book of Proverbs instructs (3:5). I began to trust in the inspired view of God as Love seen in the life, teachings, and healing works of Christ Jesus. I was comforted by a sense of love from God that previously I had not known.

In times of distress and sadness I prayed to God, based on the inspired biblical view of Him as Love, rather than of God as a harsh or punishing power. I found myself at peace and joyful. It made sense to me that God as Love meant that I was His loved child, for as the book of First John declares, “We love him, because he first loved us” (4:19). And from one small moment to another of overcoming fear or anger or lack, I saw the value of prayer to the God who is Love, an idea the Bible revealed to me.

This is how I knew there was something remarkable about the Bible – anyone could apply its sacred truths and find help. It contained concrete evidence that God is present and willing to touch our lives and heal us.

Eventually I put down my beloved children’s book. I began to read directly from the Holy Bible every day. It was when I read this statement about the Bible by the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, that I realized just how much more there is to glean from its sacred truths, “The spiritual sense of the Scriptures understood enables one to utilize the power of divine Love in casting out God’s opposites, called evils, and in healing the sick” (“Message to The Mother Church for 1900,” p. 5).

That was what I longed for, the Bible’s spiritual signification. Mrs. Eddy had clearly discovered, as she writes in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” that “[t]he Bible contains the recipe for all healing” (p. 406). Reading the Bible had always given me guidance and inspiration. But I could see, through her deep spiritual insight, that the inspired words and experiences in the Bible were guideposts to gaining an understanding of the true facts of God, man, and the universe, as Spirit and His spiritual creation. Applying these spiritual facts prayerfully brought what a dogmatic approach to the Bible could never bring me, physical healing, many times, over the years.

As I am writing to encourage others to read the Bible, as this special week indicates, I must admit that the Bible challenges me to think more deeply about God and the world around me. It’s what I cherish most about it. The Bible makes thinkers out of us; it gives us divine and inspired facts of God and man, and shows we can prove these truths in our own lives just as those earlier healers and spiritual thinkers did thousands of years ago.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Why I love the Bible
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/A-Christian-Science-Perspective/2014/1128/Why-I-love-the-Bible
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe