Why is the Bible Important to Me?

Why is the Bible Important to Me?

I suppose I should start answering this question by first showing that the Bible is important to me. This objective, I think, should be easily accomplished by first giving my testimony. I was saved in May of 1972, after a couple of college friends witnessed to me about the last times. Now I was, up to this time, skeptical in the extreme of those who said that God was real, and I was quite used to challenging other friends about their church habits, wanting to know what it was that interested them in church. Never receiving a rational answer, I was growing a little more confident all the time in my skepticism, that is, until I listened to these two college friends. For several hours around lunch time, they prattled on like they actually had read the Bible, something that no one I knew admitted to doing, and once more, they actually acted like God was real and speaking through these books of the Bible. I was invited to receive Christ as my Savior, but far too independent to allow myself to be pushed into anything, I went home, somewhat rattled.
I had lots of questions, many of them partially answered by my friends referring to the Bible. They kept quoting this book they referred to as Revelation, so I went home and began doing what I do best: read. I turned to the table of contents and found Revelation, tucked in right at the end of the Bible. I read Revelation all through chapter 22, and then remembering some of the other books they had quoted, I read Ezekiel, Nahum, and Daniel. After praying to God for understanding: God, if you are really there and caring, and part of what I read in the Bible, show yourself to me, that I may know. And believe me when I say, he answered the prayer in a dramatic fashion. I saw all the times of my life when God had been revealing himself to me. Even while I ignored him, he called to me, and now he was calling me again. I believed God, repented, and began a new life.

In my lifetime of being a Christian, over 40 years now, I have found maybe one other Christian who claims to have read Revelation before believing. It is almost unique. So, I think you should readily see that I consider the Bible very important, and I think it essential for anyone who wants to understand what God is doing in our world. Revelation is the only book in the Bible that promises a blessing to its reader; try it and see for yourself.

But it didn’t stop there for me—I mentioned that I love to read, and it was not long before I became convicted to use that love for the Bible. I began a Bible reading program that included one major book a day, and I get through the entire Bible about seven times a year. Along with it, I have committed many chapters of scripture to memory, just because they are such wondrous words. So you see, when you are asking why the Bible is important to me, I do want you to realize the magnitude of its importance.
And, in the interests of full disclosure, the two college friends that talked so patiently with me—one is now my wife of forty-one years, and the other remains a close friend. That is enough of the how of the Bible’s importance, and now it is time to deal with the meat of the question, why is the Bible important to me?

I have long observed that a Bible which is falling apart usually belongs to a man who isn’t. A truism, perhaps, but it contains the next truth that I am trying to establish. Look at what the Bible has done. Millions, perhaps several billion, of people have radically changed their living because of this one book. Of course, I realize that includes some people with whom I would disagree on foundational doctrine, but nonetheless, I recognize that this singular book has had more to do with changing mankind than any other book. Tozer tells us that, “The Word of God well understood and religiously obeyed is the shortest route to spiritual perfection. And we must not select a few favorite passages to the exclusion of others. Nothing less than a whole Bible can make a whole Christian.”

Christianity, founded on the Bible, is, I think, radically different from any other book. Christianity alone points to man as the problem in the communication between God and man, and alone, of all the religions, tells man that he is completely beyond fixing, broken beyond putting back together, and then, offers love and renewal to those who will recognize their brokenness.

I wonder at the American myth that each day is a new page, and I surmise that this famous myth of man being able to start completely anew, is out of the larger Christian story that tells of a grace freely offered to all, that anyone partaking of it might find an unlikely source in starting over. I will cast your sins into the depths of the sea, says the Bible, and I will remember them no more. I think that the experience of having God enter my life, and love me, and forgive me, and renew me with his matchless grace is the reason why I find the Bible so important to me. It points me to the Giver.

It is no good for you to point to the many who have misused the Bible; I am aware of the fact that it has been used by Hitler, not so long ago, to institute his pogrom against the Jews, and I know that before that it was misused by many in the South to justify slavery. The list of its misuses is quite long, as it has been a stumbling block that evidently trips people in quite different ways, as some fall into the greed of TV marketing, and others take the paths of significantly different beliefs that lie in the many Christian cults. But that is just the point. If we find something so real, so concrete that the temptation of bad people to use it, seems to be so compelling, does it not again prove that there is a stumbling block, one that demands to be considered? I do not think it a reach of historical viewpoint at all, to declare that the Bible has been the axis around which history has revolved. Take the Bible out of history, and what would we have left? No Jews, no Christians, no Moslems—for remember, they built off of the tenets of the Bible. Though I realize we cannot know what the world would be like without the Bible, I do think I can say that western civilization would not have led the world to its present state.

No, the Bible stands all alone, by itself, and there is not one other book which could share its glory. It is a shimmering star, guiding those who will follow it to life, and condemning those who reject it. It alone winnows our people, the human race, into two separate and permanently hostile camps, with profoundly irreconcilable differences. Perhaps that is why it remains the unspoken number one bestseller, of all time, on all lists, in America. The Bible changes lives, has changed our history, and will change our future, if its message is to be believed. Nations which have forgotten its message, and rejected its truths, have themselves passed into the greying dust of history, to be almost forgotten by the nations who remember its importance. The Bible? Ask why it is important to me? You may as well ask me why I drink water.