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I went to Biola University, which stands for the Bible Institute of Los Angeles.
Biola’s campus famously hosts a mural of white Jesus staring into the blue sky and holding out a flesh-colored Bible (because Jesus is the Word of God, and the Bible is the word of God, and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us, so basically the Bible is Jesus in your backpack). Note the trinitarian shadow play in the mural, too.
My professors were passionate about the Bible and the gifts of divine insight within its pages. They would plead with us to read it out of sheer love for God alone, even while assigning us Bible reading, memorization and journaling as part of our syllabus. We had 30 required units of Bible classes, making every student a Bible minor, and were required to go to chapel three times a week where someone would preach from the Bible there. I went to church on Sundays where I’d hear another exposition-heavy sermon, and still would feel like a failure if I missed my own morning devotions a time or two because I stayed up later writing a paper about (you guessed it) the Bible.
By graduation, I was sick of the Bible.
But I couldn’t tell anyone, because by then I was working in a church with a rich history of Bible-focused preaching, and incorporating Bible reading into our worship services was part of my job. You can’t hate the Bible and rise up in the ranks of a church staff.
I carried this dirty little secret of hating the Bible for over a decade in ministry… and I wonder how many of you secretly hated the Bible, too.
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