My Bible Challenge

​My parents were secular Jews. Consequently, I got little by way of religious instruction let alone acquaintance with the Bible at home. That really started at my then-American Baptist boarding school, Peddie. In those days, the early-to-mid 50s, we had required daily chapel, Sunday convocations or visits to local churches, and Sunday-evening vespers, which we boys referred to as “The Holy Hit Parade, since we could choose our favorite hymns to be sung: “Mr. Hicks, Number 114 please: ‘Day Is Dying in the West.’” Also required was a year-long religion course where we read a good piece of the Bible. In college I continued attending church, generally New Haven’s High Episcopal parish, Christ Church, and on occasion the University’s Chapel (Congregational), where the chaplains—the Rev. Sidney Lovett followed by the Rev. William Sloan Coffin—gave good-to-excellent sermons on the scriptures. Then, as an English major, I needed to review Bible passages relevant to the various literary works we were exploring.

In 1967 I was baptized and in the mid-70s, now a family man, I began attending Trinity Lutheran Church in Evanston, Illinois, together with my Lutheran wife and our two young children. Occasionally I would participate in a Men’s Bible Study with our pastor and, later, in the Search Bible Program developed by our national brand of Lutheranism (ALC then, ELCA now). Later, when my first wife and I moved to Hawaii, we joined a Lutheran church and spent three years in the ELCA’s Bethel Bible Program, where in the first two years we read through much of the Old Testament and in the final year all of the New. More recently (2019-23) I joined the national Episcopal Church’s Education for Ministry, where we spent year one reading and discussing the Hebrew Scriptures and year two doing the same with the New Testament. But in September of 2024, perhaps a glutton for religious punishment, I joined a year-long program called The Bible Challenge. The challenge in question is to read the whole Bible in a Year. Tomorrow, December 23, 2024, will be Day 99. It been a bit of a grind.

For me, however, the real challenge has been what I am reading. Even though I understand that beliefs and rituals 2,000-2,500 years ago in the Middle East differ considerably from those of today, I find it hard to feel much Aloha, as we say in Hawaii, for the deity of the Old Testament. HE—it’s definitely a male—is a powerful bully who plays favorites, takes sides, is a narcissistic lover of flattery (Read the Psalms!), is transactional in ways that rival any Mafia don (I won’t mention current political figures.), requires his people to obey pages of often picayune rules and regs, is jealous and fairly unforgiving, and zaps individuals and groups for seemingly the smallest offences. Forget about second chances, halfway houses, and community service. Capital punishment was the rule of the day. Typically each reading assignment includes three chapters from the Old Testament, a single psalm, and a book in the New Testament. For Day 99 the readings are 1 Samuel 7-9, Psalm 82, and John 17. After struggling through the first and second reading, I can usually breathe out when we get to the Gospel. Jesus’s Abba (“Daddy”) seems to be a nice guy—like father, like son. But I’m sick and tired of the stories in the Hebrew Scriptures of “our” God dealing out rewards and punishments like an ancient all-powerful potentate.

​If we have a great friend in Jesus, I certainly can’t say the same for Him Who Cannot Be Named as depicted in the Five Books of Moses and the history books of the Hebrew Scriptures. Oy!