Skip to main content

"The Bible Cut Down To Size" From Al Mohler's Blog

The Bible Cut Down to Size -- Scripture and the Modern Attention Span

Posted: Thursday, September 22, 2005 at 3:12 am ET



"This is a gateway to the Bible for everybody. We have to face the fact we live in an overwhelmingly secular society and must do all we can to present people with the story and what Christianity is about." Those are the words of Rev. Martin Hinton, a British churchman who decided that the Bible is just to intimidating for modern readers.

According to The Guardian [London], Hinton has produced a condensed Bible intended to be read in just 100 minutes. "We have sacrificed poetry to clarity," Mr Hinton commented. "Those who want a sense of the glorious poetry in the Bible will have to look elsewhere, but anyone who wants a sense of the story and the argument will find it here."

Len Budd, publisher of the slimmed-down Bible, admitted that much had been lost in the reduction. "Is it a dumbing down of the Bible? Yes, but that's the world today. Although we as Christians love the Bible it is very user-unfriendly. People just don't have time to read it. If this book means more people can answer pub quiz questions on the Bible, so much the better."

So, that's the point? It appears that the purpose behind this project is something closer to cultural literacy than evangelism. The new edition is "not an evangelical document," Mr. Budd explained.

Jonathan Petre of The Telegraph [London] described the project this way: "In the beginning was the Word. But the Word went on a bit, so a new version of the Bible has been produced for readers with short attention spans."

The 100-Minute Bible is the perfect symbol of our age of truncated attention spans and rampant biblical illiteracy. At the current rate of declining interest and literacy, 100 minutes will soon be unacceptably long.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Issues I Have Been Associated With Recently

The King James Only Controversy : I have been in 3 churches since the Lord was pleased to save me, the last 2 of them as a pastor. The first church was when I was not a pastor, but did teach Sunday School, and preached occasionally. It was a church that used the KJV of the bible, but neither I or the pastor was hardcore KJV Only. The second church was the first church I pastored. For the sake of some long time members in that small church, I used the King James version for sermons, but after I was there a year or two, I began using the NKJV for Scripture Readings. My third church, which is the one I'm pastoring now in Idaho, does not use the KJV. We offically use the NASB for our sermons, and the ESV many times when quoting other scriptures. I know some of my long time Christian friends from Maryland are KJV Only. I am not. I think it is an issue that we can agree to disagree on, but it seems there may be some that cannot. In the not so distant future, I'll post on the Blog why

Christian Discussions and Chem-Trails

What a title, huh? I just didn't want to post these separately :-). This morning as we were sending off our daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren, there was a Chem-Trail right over us in the sky. Have you heard of Chem-Trails? They are chemicals being put in the sky to supposedly help with so called global warming  :-). Sadly, too many people still think this is a conspiracy theory. For those that do, I recommend you just put that in a search engine and see what comes up and just start reading. They come from the exhaust of commercial airliners, but they are not the same as "contrails." Contrails dissipate and follow the plane. Chem-trails stick around. They have certain chemicals in them (Aluminum and Barium are two of them if I recall correctly) and they just add to the list of toxins that our bodies absorb and endanger our health. If more people would pay attention and communicate with our elected officials at all levels perhaps, we could put a stop to this Lord will

"The Pill: Is It Abortifacient?" From Challies.com

Interesting article for your information. First 10 responses included. To see the article and all of the responses, go to www.challies.com/archives/000564.php . The Pill: Is It Abortifacient? Here's a topic I've been meaning to bring up for a while. Before I start, I should point out that my knowledge of the sciences (other than aspects of computer science) is absolutely shameful. I last studied science in my second year of high school and only passed because during the final exam I sat behind and to the right of the class brain and was able to copy her multiple choice answers (I offer no excuse for my behaviour except to say I was unregenerate at that time). So my knowledge of biology and chemistry are poor at best. Before I begin, I'd like to point out that I have no aversion to using birth control. My wife and I have had only two children in our six years of marriage, so you could correctly draw the conclusion that we have employed birth control to space out our children