No speaka Christian...
Okay. So I'm reading a book specifically about having a gentle, quiet spirit. It's supposed to be a daily devotional book. This book has come highly recommended by some women that I truly respect both in their personal and spiritual walks. There are a lot of things I like about this book. It has the scripture right there, so you don't have to have your Bible necessarily to have your devo. It asks poignant questions; and the fact that it's only 156 pages is something I can really appreciate.
And you know the "but" is coming, so here it is, it is too advanced for me. We can't be studying 1 Peter and then you suddenly bring up Priscilla. I have no idea who that is and how she relates to what is being said now. And it's not just books, preachers do this a lot too. They'll be talking about Noah and then reference Jacob. And the congregation betrays me by saying "Amen" which I translate into "You're a Biblical idiot." One of two things happen at this point, I either spend the rest of the service reminding myself to study out Jacob so I can be in on the church's discussion, or I spend the rest of the service trying to find out where Jacob's story is in the Bible and reading it. Either way, I am not listening to anything else that's being said. See, I'm slow. My mind can't move on to another thing if it's still stuck on something else. That's just not how I work.
I seriously think Christian books (sermons and songs too) should have a spiritual maturity rating, kind of like video games. If having a basic knowledge of what the Bible is is enough to understand a book, then it gets a young rating; but if you have to be able to recite the ten comandments in Hebrew, while riding a donkey, pregnant and following the North star to keep up, it should have a Bible Scholar warning label on it. Trust me, there's nothing more discouraging than being ready to learn, being ready to dive into your Bible with the help of a devotional (or sermon) and realizing you "no speaka Christian."
I'm pretty sure, at least in this case, it was the devil's attempt to destract me from tonight's study. But darn it, if you share the Word, could you dumb it down for us? Appreciate it.
Til next time.
posted by Stephanie @ November 09, 2010
1 Comments
1 Comments:
Great point! I remember how frustrated and left out I felt a couple years ago when I first came to church. It seemed like everyone knew everything about the bible and I didn't! But you'd be surprised how many people really don't know all that much and hardly even read their bibles. Sometimes when I don't know something, I like to look it up on the internet. Wikipedia is really great about pointing out who the bible characters are and their basic summary. It's a start anyway! If I get confused in the sermon, or want to delve deeper into a verse, I quickly scribble the name or whatever on my notebook and try and tune in on the rest even if it's hard to follow.
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