Chalkface: Throwing Bibles Out of Churches

You would be forgiven for thinking that I spent my teaching career at the Sludd Street School for the Educationally Backward. The last 18 were in fact spent at a well-regarded boys’ grammar. Yet this is a view from one of the English classrooms some years ago. It made me cross at the time, and I relished showing it to colleagues who taught in that department, suggesting they be more vigilant. Nowadays, I’m more sanguine, but I still roll my eyes at this reminder of human stupidity. It shows a roof below a classroom window with school dictionaries thrown onto it. Rather than extending their sparse vocabularies, furthering their limited educations and generally bettering themselves, it shows the abject dullness of the human mind.

Before we criticise the inanity of so called grammar school boys and their careless attitudes towards their own educations and their parents’ income tax, let us recall some of the foolish carryings-on which pass for Christianity in some churches. Rolling around on the floor, laughing uncontrollably. Praying to Mary because Jesus is busy. Petitioning for a Mercedes-Benz because God loves to make us rich. Receiving direct messages from God but only in a language that no-one speaks. Claiming guaranteed healing not guaranteed in scripture. Saying that Jesus did not literally rise from the dead. Buying a paraphrase of scripture and preaching from it. Bowing to a piece of bread. Thinking climate change will end the world.

If it shames young students of English language to have dictionaries thrown out of classroom windows, how worse are Christians for having thrown Bibles out of churches?

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest for Me; Because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. Hosea 4:6

Now the king was sitting in the winter house in the ninth month, with a fire burning on the hearth before him. And it happened, when Jehudi had read three or four columns, that the king cut it with the scribe’s knife and cast it into the fire that was on the hearth, until all the scroll was consumed in the fire that was on the hearth. Yet they were not afraid, nor did they tear their garments, the king nor any of his servants who heard all these words. Jeremiah 36:22-24, both New King James Version.