The Bible in School

 Dr. Steven Cutchins has an intriguing article over at the American Thinker today entitled The Bible in Schools? Research Says It Matters. Why is it so intriguing? Well, I have some personal experience to share, but first I want to tell you what the research says.

Research from the Center for Bible Engagement’s Power of 4 study, which examined over 400,000 people, found that casual Bible reading doesn’t change lives. But engaging with Scripture four times a week or more does.

Those who did saw significant improvements in mental health, decision-making, and moral behavior -- including lower levels of loneliness, anger, substance abuse, and pornography use.

While the study analyzed individuals of all ages, its findings suggest that younger people -- who are increasingly grappling with depression, anxiety, and identity confusion -- would likely experience similar benefits.

The research found that individuals who engage with the Bible regularly experience 30% less loneliness, 32% fewer anger issues, and a 60% decrease in feelings of spiritual emptiness. Additionally, pornography use declined by 62%, substance abuse by 57%, and gambling by 74%, while participation in faith-sharing increased by 228%.

If a secular program yielded these results, every school in America would adopt it. However, since it’s the Bible, they are compelled to ignore its benefits.

I have to confess that 10 years ago I would have found these results astounding. Today, I say "But of course." When I escaped from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and joined the Missouri Synod, my new pastor suggested I start reading the Bible every day, following a program put out by the Missouri Synod. He had been following it for 37 years. I took it to heart but found I could only follow it for perhaps 4-6 months at a time. Finally, I decided made a commitment to read the entire Bible in a year following the prescribed readings each day. I will say that it has been eye opening. Each time I read a chapter, or a verse, I find new meanings. Sometimes I read a book and wonder what it has to do with me, only on a later reading it suddenly becomes clear that it was written just for me.

Daily Bible readings generally take between a half hour and 45 minutes. You read a Psalm a day (except for Psalm 119) Then you read a chapter or two or three depending. By the end of the year, you have read the entire Bible, and read the Psalms twice. For those who have only read the New Testament, you may think that God changed his mind about mankind. Nothing could be further from the truth. God appears in the Old Testament as all three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And because you read it in bite sized chunks, you form a habit; you begin to look forward to it.

I read the Bible for His truths; for religious and theological reasons. It is a great story with one central character, namely God. But it is also literature with a number of genres. It is history (and archeologists keep uncovering things that prove the Bible true), poetry, prophesy, Gospels, epistles or letters, and apocolypse. Today, our laws are ultimately grounded in God's laws presented in the 10 Commandments. But it wasn't always so. For much of human history, human life was dirty, brutal and short. And in many places where Christianity has been rejected, it still is. It was God who said that we shouldn't murder each other, that we shouldn't kill our children, that we shouldn't steal our neighbor's stuff and so on. For the first time he demanded that the Israelites exercise the same justice on strangers as they did for themselves. They must not discriminate on a someone because he was poor. This was revolutionary stuff in its day. It is only because of the spread of Christianity that we do not see it as revolutionary today.

One can teach the Bible in schools as history, as poetry, as the shaper of our culture, without teaching Christianity. Students are free to believe what they and their parents want to believe. But it is important as citizens of the United States, and the state and community in which they live to understand our place in history.