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(Credit: Chineka, Flickr Creative Commons<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\nBribing kids with candy (or other prizes) to memorize Bible verses is an ancient tradition in the Church.<\/p>\n
And by ancient, I mean it dates back to at least the 1980s when I was a kid and like every other red-blooded American I just assume everything from my childhood is the way it\u2019s always been and, therefore, the way it always should be.<\/p>\n
In theory, teaching our children to memorize scripture is a wonderful thing. After all, if our faith is biblically based, then knowing a thing or two about the Bible would probably come in handy from time to time.<\/p>\n
But in practice, our love for Bible verses can be incredibly problematic.<\/p>\n
In fact, Bible verses might be the worst thing ever.<\/p>\n
I know that may sound strange, perhaps even bordering on the blasphemous, but hang with me for a moment and I promise I won\u2019t lead you into the flames.<\/p>\n
Believe it or not, the chapters and verses that divide our modern Bibles into today didn\u2019t exist for the first 1,000 years or so of Christianity. Which was awful for Sunday School kids back then, because they had to memorize entire books of the Bible just to get a piece of butterscotch candy they didn\u2019t really want in the first place.<\/p>\n
When the books of the Bible were first written down, they were read and discussed in much greater length than we typically do today. Sure, the Psalms were often read or sung one at time and specific Levitical laws were analyzed and debated over individually or just a few at a time, but when\u00a0Nehemiah rediscovered the book of Deuteronomy, he didn\u2019t have Ezra read selected portions.\u00a0He read the entire thing to the people of Israel<\/a>. Likewise, Paul\u2019s letters in the New Testament were intended to be read in their entirety to the congregation to whom he was writing \u2013 just like we would read an entire letter today. Or, maybe an entire email. Does anybody still write letters?<\/p>\n Sure, particular stories like that of Noah and his ark were told without slogging through\u00a0the entire book of Genesis, but it wasn\u2019t until the 13th century when a guy named Stephen Langton<\/a>, a Cardinal and Archbishop of Canterbury, began dividing up the Bible into more easily accessible portions that our modern chapters began to appear. Verses followed later as a way to further subdivide these newly created chapters into easy to cite passages of scripture.<\/p>\n I imagine at the time it seemed like a wonderful revolution in biblical studies. Scholars could converse more easily with each other about what part of scripture was being debated and children could rack up the candy far more quickly now that they had less to memorize.<\/p>\n Nearly a thousand years later, however, chapters and verses have become\u00a0decidedly less wonderful.<\/p>\n On the most basic level (and this isn\u2019t anything new; it began the moment Langton got to work), chapters and verses\u00a0chop up scripture in ways it was never intended, allowing modern readers to focus on small portions\u00a0of a much bigger conversation and thereby miss the crucial context for understanding the verse we\u2019re focused on. Context is everything and without it a particular verse can be warped, twisted, or cut and pasted with other verses to create a meaning the original author never intended.<\/p>\n It\u2019s this proof-texting, ripping verses out of their proper context to prove a point \u2013 that leads to legalism, fundamentalism, and all sorts of other -isms that turn the Bible into a weapon of war instead of a message of peace.<\/p>\n On one end of the problematic spectrum you\u2019ve got a verse like Jeremiah 29:11, \u201cFor I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future<\/em>.\u201d There are few things we love more than quoting that verse at graduation ceremonies, but the thing is, it doesn\u2019t really have anything to do with us. At least not directly. God was speaking specifically to the children of Israel while they were in exile. It was a promise to them that one day their exile would end. It wasn\u2019t a divine promise to an 18 year old American high school student\u00a0that they would become rich and famous after graduation. But by virtue of its verse-edness (Is that word? Well, it is now), all context and proper understanding for that passage has been lost and today it\u2019s become little more than a proof-text for the prosperity gospel.<\/p>\n But verses can create bigger problems than that.<\/p>\n Take Paul\u2019s infamous words from 1 Corinthians 14:34, \u201cWomen should be silent in the church<\/em>.\u201d Or 1 Timothy 2:12 in which he wrote, \u201cI do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet<\/em>.\u201d Despite the fact that Paul also wrote that all are one in Christ Jesus<\/a>, involved women in places of leadership in his ministry<\/a>, and ignoring the fact that Jesus also made women a central part of his ministry<\/a> (including choosing women to be the first ones to proclaim the resurrection), the isolation of these verses allows them to be stripped of both their biblical and historical context in order to relegate women to second class citizenship in the Church.<\/p>\n But verses can create even bigger problems than that.<\/p>\n We consider ourselves to be fairly enlightened people today, folks who understand and value the importance of things like equality and justice. The idea that one person could be the property of another person is universally deplored in the Church today\u2026but that wasn\u2019t always the case<\/a> And, of course, that\u2019s just the tip of the iceberg of the myriad of ways in which the creation of chapters and verses has empowered us to justify our legalism, sanctify our bigotry, and proof-text our oppression of people we don\u2019t like.<\/p>\n Now, as someone who spent the better part of a decade studying the faith in the academy, I am fully aware of how helpful the division of scripture can be in that sort of setting. Likewise, having been on both sides of the pulpit, I realize that going through an entire book like Matthew or Acts on a Sunday morning (at least in the way we\u2019re used to in modern sermons) is neither possible for the preacher nor particularly appealing for the congregation.<\/p>\n So, yes, there are certainly times in which chapters and verses can be helpful as reference points so long as\u00a0as we understand how incredibly narrow\u00a0our perspective is in that moment and how limited our understanding of that passage will be if we do not venture out further into the text.<\/p>\n However, I am convinced that the benefits, insights, and understanding that can be gleaned from being forced to retell an\u00a0entire story and wade through its context and commentary, far outweighs whatever convenience chapters and verses might afford. And again, that is to say nothing of the very real problems that a \u201cplain reading\u201d of those chapters and verses has\u00a0created and continues to create in the lives of very real people.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=amerjesu-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1469621819\")
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). But this inability to reverse the tide of history simply means we must be that much more diligent in our study of scripture and always be on guard to resist\u00a0the temptation to chop up the Bible into little pieces we can put back together (or not) however we see fit.<\/p>\n