“The Bible – helpful, but not read much”

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865678578/The-Bible-1-helpful-but-not-read-much.html

Many homes will have a copy of the Bible that is utterly pristine, because it’s too sacred to actually be read.  (I saw this often on my mission in Switzerland, but it’s certainly true in America and elsewhere, as well.)  In such cases, the Bible functions rather like a talisman.  I recall one exceptionally bright Catholic gentleman of my father’s generation whom I knew well (and liked) from my earliest years.  Whenever a religious question came up — and he was very much a believer — he would announce that we needed to refer that matter “to the learned doctors of sacred scripture.”

This isn’t true, I think, among Latter-day Saints.  Which isn’t to say that we read the Bible and the other scriptures as much as we should, nor that we study them enough or understand them well enough.  But, on the whole, I think we do relatively well.

Posted from Tel Aviv, Israel