If the Blind Man Can't Read it, Write it Interestingly.

I'm in Half Price Books looking through the Christian section. Just as I was lamenting to my brother about how much I hate devotionals with modern spins (like "Tune in" and "Faithbook of Jesus") I came across a Bible. Unlike most Bibles, this Bible has pre-written notes all over its pages, imitating handwriting. On the front it says, "from the major motion picture 'Letters to God.'" As I flipped through the pages of the NIV Bible with notes in it, I couldn't help but think how much time it must have taken to copy notes from the movie to the Bible. As a second thought to throw out there, I have to wonder how big a demand there is for such a specific type of expensive Bible.

Although I am not condemning this idea altogether, I am saying I would never let my contribution to God's kingdom on Earth be copying down notes in a Bible to mass produce it to a very limited group of English speakers. This is why: anyone in market for this Bible probably already has one, and should probably be writing their own god damn notes in it. Furthermore, there are still a great deal of unreached people who have never read a Bible because a Bible doesn't exist in their language, or because they could be killed for having it. Yet still Bibles are being pumped out for every Bill and Sue that are too picky to read a regular old Holy Bible.

The only motivation behind creating such versions of the Bible I can think of is making the Bible appeal to a wider audience. If we make a sports Bible, a teenage girl Bible, a mid-life crisis Bible, a post menopause Bible, a preteen Bible, a musical Bible, a Bible for chemistry majors and a Bible for high school drop outs, then more people will read the Bible, right? Hopefully, but somehow I don't think that's true.

Jesus-- who we can assume was plenty loving by virtue of being God incarnate-- went to great lengths to make people not understand what the hell he was talking about. I think it suffices to say, then, that it isn't our job to make the word he left for us super appealing to all walks of life.

Based on the premise that these Bible industries are making Bibles for the purpose of appealing to people who haven't found the "regular" Bible appealing, we can conclude that those who the Bible is going to most widely attract are those who are at best only mildly interested in its content.

So, from my perspective, while there are still people going to hell because they've never heard the gospel, and have no Bible to hear it from, our main priority should not be getting weird Bibles to people that have heard the gospel and rejected it time after time.

Like I said before, I'm not rejecting the idea of personalized Bibles entirely. Rather, I am suggesting that if we get the gospel, the Bible, food and medicine to every tribe tongue and nation-- and for some reason Jesus has not yet returned-- then maybe we can focus on getting every man, woman and child a Bible with their fricken name on it and their interests on every page. Until then it shouldn't be a priority.