The Bible as entertainment

Ok, one last non-textual post. Then it's time to get down to business time.

This story may only be partially true. But the spirit of the experience is definitely true. And in truth, can we ask for much more? Yes, but that's not really what I want to talk about here. I want to tell a story about my first experience reading the bible.

At the age of 14 I had a Bar Mitzvah and about eight years of Sunday school behind me. At this point I counted for Minion and could read rudimentary Hebrew. If Judaisim had a GRE I would have scored average. But only average. I was an average Jew because I had never read the Torah. In fact, I had never read the bible wholly it in any of its forms. New, Old, Hebraic, Quaran, Child, or Gun- the Bible was an untouched stone for me.

My comfortable existence alotted me a back yard, a large 4 bed room house, two professional parents, a TV, and a myriad of ants to roast with a magnifying glass. I learned to read from books with goosebumps on the cover and learned to pray from a well established religion complete with a rabbi ten minutes away. My relationship with the holy texts was tangential at best and it was getting only more oblique, I had just purchased my first video game system (Bar Mitzvah money is great).

As a young man-boy who was gradually coming into self awareness, I realized the hypocrisy of having taken a Bar Mitzvah without having an actual Biblical literacy to go along with it. So I decided to give it the good ole sophomoric try. I resigned myself to reading the text.

It was a dark and stormy night. The light in my room flickered with each pound of thunder. God was playing at his electric set again, and it was time to read his book before he knocked all of us off the rock. I opened the Bible. I looked at the words. I began reading. I fell asleep.

The next night, it was a warm late may night and the grass smelled of dew and freshness through my window. I opened the Bible. I tried to read. The grass smelled of dew and freshness. I tried to read. Reading never arrived so I went outside and chased the neighborhood dogs or something like that.

On the third night, I played nintendo with my friends and drank lemonade. We also probably ate cheetos.

I never actually got around to reading the thing. As with a lot of people, the allure of shiny things that went boom ate my want for spiritual rapture. I asked my dad if I should feel guilty about not reading the most important piece of literature in western society. Dad responded that God should have made the world less amazing if he wanted me to read a book. My dad was an athiest and kind of bitter about these kinds of things. According to my ma, he had read the bible, and up to a few decades ago, had regularly attended a bible study class. I figure that he figured that I would figure out how important the document was later in life in some sort of detached manner. Probably in college.

(There is more to this post, but the story is the important part so I will post it now. More analysis in a few days or hours or something.)