This Biblically illiteral Generation

My wife and I happened to land on the last few minutes of Jeprody the other day. The final Jeprody question was "words in the bible". I love it when they do anything bible related on Jeprody. I remember when i was a kid, I had this picture bible. It was a biblical comic book. I loved it. It helped guarantee many a victory at Bible trivia games in subsequent years.

The final jeprody question was: "From Genesis "For this reason a man shall ____ his parents and _____ to his wife." One letter is added to one to make the other."

Can you believe not a single contestant got it? Catherine and i both thought it was so easy. any of them would have only had to read a couple chapters into genesis to know. They knew millions of other random bits of trivia but they didn't know what god, the one who created them, has to say?

knowing the bible, of course, is only the first step - living it and teaching it to others is where its at. my wife and i just finished reading the book of Ezra. Ezra was a biblical scholar - an expert in the revelation of God. He committed himself to study the Torah, To live it out and to teach others. I suppose my fear is that i don't have what it takes to actually live out the word of god, but God says his yoke is easy and his burden is light. He says his commands are not burdensome.

I have been reading a number of songwriting books lately. How useless it would be to know everything there is to know about songwriting, and never write a song. Sadly, this is exactly how it is for many who "know their bibles". I should know - I'm one of them.

How did the fact that i could beat most everyone at bible trivia help me to love others well? In fact it did just the opposite. Somehow instead I ended up with a sense of superiority over all those bucolically illiterates. So you see, "knowledge puffs up, but love builds up." just as the bible says.

so does this mean we don't study the word of God because it may puff up our spiritual egos and make us nauseating to ourselves and others? no, it means we spend the time learning about how to write a better song, and then go out and live one.