Good News!

Good News!

Its happened again. I've completely read through the religious texts of Christianity in their entirety. A few years ago, (sometime after 2001, I think?) I ran across a copy of the Good News Bible with Deuterocanonicals/Apocrypha, with an endorsement from the former Blue Earth Priest, Father Tighe. I had been meaning to get a Good News Bible, as they have little stick figure illustrations. Having read the thing, a rich commentary would have been more helpful. The Deuterocanonicals, aka "The Apocrypha" are a series of Books kept in the Bible by Roman Catholics, but protestants felt were helpful,

but not the divine Word of God, so they were set aside. Like most protestants, I was largely unaware of this and had never heard of these other books. Predominantly history books of Israel, there's a lot of overlap with the other history books. The Wisdom of Solomon is pretty good, something on the same level as the Proverbs.


So here's the Breakdown:

Old Testament: 1,041 pages
Deuterocanonicals/Aprocrypha: 217 pages
"Some Additional Books" (1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, and the Prayer of Manasseh): 59 Pages
New Testament: 354 Pages

Grand Total: 1,671 pages

In short, that's one large book, and small wonder why many adherents don't read the thing.

The admonition I've received over the years is to read the Bible through, especially coinciding with a calendar year. The best rationale I can come up with for this is that it makes for easy "New Years' Resolution Sermon fodder." Seriously, I don't see the connection. There are 66 books in the Protestant Bible, so why not do one a week, and be done in 66 weeks instead of 52? or read 11 a month and be done in half a year?
The short answer is that a year works out to Christians can do without too much trouble, and still feel pius about their religiosity. I'm not entirely sure who all reads this, so let me clarify for those chanting "its a relationship, not a religion!" That cliche hurting my ears aside, It isn't accurate in terms of the mandate of reading the Bible through in one swoop around the sun. Breaking down to 4 chapters a day, the reader spends 75% of the year in the Old Testament. While I admit that the OT is important, much of it is largely irrelevant (have you memorized the geneologies of Numbers? Do you obey ALL of the Levitican laws, or just the ones you like?) or incredibly dry histories of wars that happened a long time ago, or are prophecies by Israelites and For the Israelites, not to be taken out of context and applied to (insert your nation here). You might say that Christ brought us into the fold and therefore it does apply to us. It depends on the passage, and that's not my rant here. I was talking about the Old Testament reading is largely religious. Plodding along and not getting much out of the OT can be nothing short of the definition of Religion. I asked myself quite a few times, "why am I reading this? Oh, because I'm told that I'm supposed to." I heard of one theologian who said that if the Holy Spirit has come upon us as Christ said, we really don't need to check the book, just check with the HS, so he recommended "religiously burning Bibles." Extreme, yes, but he makes an interesting point.

Christians are not the Israelites of the Old Testament. Christians sometimes use select Levitican laws to back up being hostile towards homosexuals, but these same people wear clothes made of two different plants, or they eat pork, or have tattoos, or any number of these rules. Why is this? My theory is that people were told to read the Bible, and spending 3/4 of their time in the OT, have adopted OT rules. The apostle Paul says something about a baby must drink milk before it moves on to solid food. That's what needs to be done here. It is my opinion, that, rather than spending so much time in the OT, which gives supporting documentation to the New Testament, Christians ought to spend the majority of their time in the New Testament.
Rather than spending 3/4 of a year reading the OT, spend 3/4 of the year reading the New Testament. That means reading the New Testament 9 times for each trip through the OT. "Wait, that's an insane amount of reading!" you exclaim. Yes, yes it is. So don't read it all in a year, but get a firm grip on the teachings of Christ before you wander around the Old Testament. I'd go even further and say that much of the New Testament, like the epistles, are letters specifically written to unique churches addressing particular problems. We can gain a lot of insight from these, but its not an exhaustive list of what we should and should not do. Therefore, maybe it would be best to read the Gospels moreso than the rest of the NT. Again, this poses the concern of the Gospels making up much less of the NT than the rest. So what? If we don't adhere to Christ's basic teachings, what good is it to study Revelations again and again? There's a movement called "Red Letter Christians" a reference to some Bibles having the words of Jesus in red letters. They try to live their life by these words. To me, this seems redundant. If you're not following Jesus' words and at least trying to live by them, you're hardly a Christian.

Here's a simple quiz to prove my point about Christians not knowing Jesus' basic teachings:

Question 1)

What is the greatest commandment?

a) Love your neighbor as yourself.

b) Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

c) You shall not commit murder.

d) You shall not steal.


Question 2)

What is the greatest commandment?

a) Love your neighbor as yourself.

b) Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

c) You shall not commit murder.

d) Honor the Sabbath Day and Keep it Holy.


Question 3)
Who is my neighbor?

a) My friend

b) everyone

c) my relatives

d) people who live close to me


Question 4)
Someone has wronged me, yet again. How many times must I forgive him?

a)Just once.

b) 7 Times

c) 70 Times

d) 490 times


Question 5)
What must I do to get to heaven?

a) Good Deeds

b) Pray 3 times daily

c) Believe that Jesus is the Son of God

d) Be kind and live better than at least some other people you know


Short answer.

Question 6)

What is the message of the Wise Man who built his house on the rock vs the foolish man who built his house on the sand?

Question 7)

Jesus follows up the Beatitudes with teachings on Anger, Adultery, Charity, Prayer, and Fasting. What is he getting at here?


Question 8)

Jesus addressed the concept of eating unclean things. What was his point?

Question 9)

Jesus said many things about money. What is the gist?

Question 10)

Along with the idea that we ought to love one another, Jesus spoke about forgiveness in connection. Provide an example of this.



1). b. Matthew 22:38
2). a. Matthew 22:39. Give yourself half points if you swapped a&b.
3). b. Luke 10:25-37. The parable of the Good Samaritan indicates our neighbors include even people groups we dislike.
4). d. 70 times 7. Probably a flowery way of saying, "you will lost track of the number of times you forgive someone, but you still should." Matthew 18:21-35. The parable of the Unforgiving Servant explains that God forgave us much more than any wrong anyone else could do to us, so if we want to be forgiven, we must be equally as forgiving.
5). c. John 3:16. Jesus tells Nicodemus that if he Believes, he will have eternal life.
6). Matthew 7:24-27; Luke 6:47-49. This references listening to the words of Jesus and obeying them, vs listening and not obeying.
7). Matthew 5:17-6:34 In a nutshell, Jesus says follow the spirit of the law, not just the letter. Don't just not murder someone, don't be angry. Don't just not actually commit adultery, don't even think about it. Don't show off how much you are praying, fasting or giving to the poor, then you're just being prideful.
8). Matthew 15:16-20; Mark 7:14-23. Jesus says that eating without washing your hands doesn't make you unclean. Doesn't matter what you eat, for that matter. Things that you say, however can make you unclean.
9). Best summarized in The question about paying taxes (Matthew 22:15-22; Mark 12:13-17; Luke 20:20-26), Jesus said money has Caesar's picture on it, so pay taxes to Caesar. Basically, we ought to trust God to provide and not worry about money, lest it become more important to us than God.
10) A poignant example is as Jesus hung upon the cross, he asked God to "forgive them, for they know not what they do" Luke 23:34. Even in death, Jesus forgave his fellow man. Would you forgive someone who was in the process of killing you unjustly?

Okay, so the answers are not exhaustive, you may have some different ideas on the short answer. The point is that the Gospels offer rich teachings which Christians can - should - ought to apply to everyday life. So if you're insistent upon bible reading each and every day, I think one's studies should primarily be the Gospels.