Ignorance Ain't Bliss

Messing with a friend one April Fool's day, I sent them a letter that included the quote, "'The children of your youth make you quiver' (Hezekiah 127:4)." My friend objected. "Hey, that's not what it says. It says that 'the children of your youth are like arrows in your hand.' It wasn't until later that I realized you had quoted Hezekiah." Hezekiah was my favorite Old Testament book, and 3 Peter my favorite New Testament book. They sounded "Bibley" without actually existing and I could get away with a lot with them. "You know," I could say, "The Bible says, 'This too shall pass' -- Hezekiah 12:3", and people would feel obliged to believe me because, hey, it's in the Bible. Of course, it wasn't.

Modern Christians have all sorts of options for Bibles in modern translations or versions. Why is it, then, that we suffer so pitifully from Bible ignorance? Ask your everyday church-going type if these quotes come from the bible and you'll likely find that most of them believe they do:

"God helps those who help themselves." (Actually attributed to Ben Franklin)

"God works in mysterious ways." (Actually from a 19th century hymn)

"Cleanliness is next to godliness." (Apparently something from John Wesley)

"Moderation in all things."

"Once saved, always saved."

"God loves you and wants you to be happy."

The problem is that they're not in there. Some of the popular-but-faulty quotes are close, but not quite. You'll find, for instance, the quote that "Money is the root of all evil." No, what it says is "The love of money is a root of all kinds of evils" (1 Tim 6:10). Note the two errors. It is not money, but the love of money. And this love is not the root of all evil, but all kinds of evil.

A popular near-miss is "Spare the rod, spoil the child." The words aren't there. The idea is. "Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him" (Prov 13:24). "Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him" (Prov 22:15). Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die. If you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from Sheol" (Prov 23:13-14). So, yeah, pretty close, but not quite.

How about this one? Surely this one is in the Bible. "Pride goes before a fall." Oooh, close again, but still not accurate. The quote is actually "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall" (Prov 16:18). So the idea is present here, but not the text.

Other ideas are unbiblical though quite popular. Did you know, for instance, that there is no reference to Eve eating an apple? She ate the fruit of the tree. The apple was popularized later. Everyone knows about "Jonah and the whale", except the Bible doesn't talk about a whale. It talks about a "great fish". And while we all know that there were three wise men in the stable at the birth of Jesus (and we even know their names), it turns out that there is no reference to the number of magi (it is believed that there were three because there were three gifts listed), there is no reference to a stable (just a manger), and there is good reason to believe that these magi didn't show up for at least a year after Jesus's birth.

The near misses aren't quite so bad. There are, however, others that are a dangerous ignorance.

"God helps those who help themselves" is a lie. God helps those who cannot help themselves. Indeed, the basic biblical premise about the nature of Man is "There is none good; no, not one." Worse, if "God helps those who help themselves", the logical conclusion is "God ultimately saves those who save themselves." That is, if you help yourself by being as good as you can be, God will see that and help you out.

"God loves you and wants you to be happy." Derived somewhat, I suppose, from the "blessings" mentioned often in Scripture, this idea is scurrilous. (Just had to throw a vocabulary word in there.) There is no such reference or inference in Scripture. We know that "God works all things together for good to those who love God", but that isn't a promise of happiness. We do, on the other hand, have promises for suffering and discipline. This notion that God loves everyone and wants us all to be happy is the route to all sorts of sin. "I'm not happy in my marriage and God wants me to be happy, so I will divorce the bum." "I will be happy if she and I move in together and God wants me to be happy, so it must be right." ("If loving you is wrong, I don't want to be right.") In this form, "God and happiness" form a gateway drug, so to speak, a dangerous slope that simply feeds self.

"Wait a minute!" I will hear some say. "Sure, that 'once saved, always saved' isn't actually in their, but the idea is." I'd tag that as another dangerous misquote. The concept of "once saved, always saved" suggests that we can get saved and never change. There is no necessary fruit. There is no reason to suggest that the new birth produces a new life. James would have to be mistaken, however, because he assured us that faith without works was dead. Avoiding this error with the premise of "once saved, always saved" is very difficult.

It's sad, I think, that we have so many translations and so many forms of the Bible available, yet we seem to know it so poorly. If it is true that Scripture is the sole authority on matters of faith and practice, I'd think we'd want to be familiar with it. Vastly more important, however, if the Bible is the Word of God, any follower of God would need to be wrapped in the letters that God has provided for us. We ought to be reading it voraciously. We ought to be memorizing it and meditating on it. We ought to be talking about it and living it. Cute mistakes and sloppy errors aside, the dangers of failing to rightly handle the Word of God are too varied and too big to be ignored. Sometimes ignorance is not bliss.