The Deceiving Scriptures

Most of the people who proclaim to be Christians haven’t really read the Bible, at least not in its totality. The few sections that most ordinary people have actually thumbed through are those passages that are pointed out to them by priests and preachers during the deliberation of their sermons at Mass time. Even then, most people just read a smaller section and prefer just to listen to it as it’s read out loud to them. They listen in fascination as the priest reads passages of the Bible, adding intonation to highlight certain events, demonstrating great knowledge of its content and an impressive storytelling ability. This ability developed over the years and harnessed even further with every sermon given. Some people like to close their eyes and listen in amazement, transporting themselves in their minds back in time some thousand years and more. They imagine the Roman soldiers with their swords and spears and the Jews and Egyptians with their robes and leather sandals. They envision Adam and Eve in paradise or the great Solomon as he commanded his army or Moses as he led his people across the Red Sea into the Promised Land. They have done this throughout the years as they submissively attend Sunday Mass. So submissive has been people’s attendance that it appears as if they were mentally wired to do so, and they keep on doing it with discipline, listening over and over to the priests as they read out loud the same stories, the same passages, and most importantly, as he gives them the same interpretation. And many of them, after so many years of listening, still remain uninterested to read the Bible from start to finish. Many Sunday attendees do not even bother to read the same passage addressed during Mass just to verify that what was presented is correct within the content of the entire biblical section. The question thus remains, Why is it that so many so-called Christians do not read the Bible? After solemnly attending Mass week after week, year after year? Aren’t they interested at least one flyspeck in reading a complete chapter? Read it from beginning to end and to reason and arrive at their own interpretation? Particularly given the fact that the Bible was supposedly dictated to those who wrote it by God himself?