Darmok

Only a Star Trek fan would recognize the name Darmok. In this episode, Captain Picard and Dathan, an alien captain, are on a hostile planet unable to communicate - Picard combines words to create sentences, Dathan using words to create metaphors, symbols of events that occurred only in his culture. Eventually the lesson of understanding language in forming alliances between individuals and cultures becomes obvious.

What has that to do with reading the Bible? Well, for those of us who speak English, it has to do with: 

The salt of the earth;
Fought the good fight;
Go the extra mile;
Just a drop in the bucket;
Escaped by the skin of my teeth.

Just a few English phrases based on scripture in the King James version. Such phrases come through our literature. Over 1,300 quotations or allusion from the Bible are found in Shakespeare’s works alone. One book I was reading lists a number of human rights movements over the last couple of centuries and states:  “These movements of modern times have all employed the language of the Bible.” (Cahill, Thomas, The Gift of the Jews:)

Thus, to increase knowledge of our language, our literature, our culture, beyond religious content, it is important to be acquainted with the Bible.

That’s for anyone who speaks English. For a Christian, it is much more important. Based on this scripture:

For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12 KJV)

Do we think of God’s word, the scriptures, as being powerful? Jesus did:

Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. (Matthew 22:29 KJV)

Jesus used scriptures to sort out the physical from the spiritual. He used them to answer Satan just as He used them to answer both tempting and sincere questions from His listeners. He knew them by heart.

The Bible defines us as Christians. Without the Bible, we have no foundation for our faith. That’s one reason I list it first in my own statement of faith, “What I Believe”: 

I believe the Bible is Holy, the divinely inspired and preserved Word of God, the final authority for all faith and life. I place this belief first, not because it is the most important, but because it explains and provides answers for so much of the following. Without the Bible, there is not a foundation for believing ...

I continue with paragraphs touching the foundation of my faith, each built on a scripture reference. I read the Bible to see if it is true, as the Bereans did:

These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. (Acts 17:11 KJV)

I read the Bible so that I might be closer in my relationship to God:

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? (Micah 6:8 KJV)

The relationship that was lost, so long ago:

And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. (Genesis 3:8 KJV)

We read the Bible for that humble walk with our Lord and our God, as it was in the Garden and on the road to Emmaus. Please, join in.