Guilt-Edged Bibles

(No, that’s not a typo!)

There is no shortage of Bibles. What a blessing! We can choose from a score of translations in a number of different languages, and from various bindings in an assortment of colors. We can read the printed page or listen to an audio recording or read an online version.

I searched yesterday for Bibles with gilt edges. One website had 48 different items, another had 86. There were all kinds of Bibles: one a facsimile edition of the Cambridge Geneva Bible of 1591 (the edition carried by the Pilgrims when they came to America) selling for almost $2200. Bound in brown calfskin!! In a presentation box!! With gilt edges!! I also found for sale a Deluxe Gift and Award Bible!! Leather!! Used, showing average wear—but a well-worn Bible is good. For one cent!! And it has gilt edges!!

I was particularly interested in gilt-edged Bibles because of our tendency to make them guilt-edged. Jesus came to proclaim good news. “He came to Nazareth where he had been reared. As he always did on the Sabbath, he went to the meeting place. When he stood up to read, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written, ‘God's Spirit is on me; he's chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor, sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the burdened and battered free, to announce, “This is God's year to act!” ’ He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the place was on him, intent. Then he started in, ‘You've just heard Scripture make history. It came true just now in this place.’ " (Luke 4:16-21 MSG)

Hope, pardon, light, freedom. Good news! Great news! But all too often we see some bearers of the Gospel treat it as merchandise rather than the “good tidings of great joy to all people” that the angel host announced. The Gospel becomes anything but good news whenever it shackles people with guilt, misleads them with partial truths, or ties them to those who wish to control them. The very fact that we live in a free country where all these Bibles abound, means that anyone at all can claim to be an able presenter of the Word.

Jesus did not speak soft words about such teachers. “Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, ‘The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the law of Moses. So practice and obey whatever they tell you, but don’t follow their example. For they don’t practice what they teach. They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden. Everything they do is for show. . . They love to sit at the head table at banquets and in the seats of honor in the synagogues. . . They love to receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces . . . The greatest among you must be a servant . . . What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you shut the door of the Kingdom of Heaven in people’s faces. You won’t go in yourselves, and you don’t let others enter either.” (Matthew 23:1-13 NLT) These words of Jesus give us a good standard by which to measure those who would teach/preach from a “guilt-edged” Bible. Be cautious around them, and instead give your love and respect to those who have shared with you the genuine Good News!

MaryMartha
(All rights reserved)

Scripture marked MSG is taken from The Message. Copyright © 2003 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. Scripture quotation marked NLT is taken from The Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. United States of America. All rights reserved

Email: mrymrtha@gmail.com