The Bible Devalued

In 1962 when I was 17 years old I worked for a home builder as a laborer and made $1.50 per hour and that was a good salary. My friend worked at an ice cream parlor and made $.85 per hour. Actually a dollar in 1913 could buy $26 dollars of stuff today.  The dollar was worth 26 times more then than it is worth today, (2020). The dollar has dropped significantly in value over the last 100 years and I think the Bible has also. The Bible has gone through a significant devaluation in our country and we are suffering as a result.

How much do you value the Bible?

If we get cancer we research all the treatment options. We get other doctors opinions and ask everyone we know that could advise us on the correct path to follow. This battle becomes all-consuming and we focus all of our attention on it as our life is at risk.

But can’t this same analogy apply to scripture. If it is truly God’s Word shouldn’t the research and study of it be all-consuming as well?  Because it says we could have an abundant life here as well as growing our faith in order to have a home in heaven.

The enemy has used the culture to convince us that the Bible no longer has value and we don’t really need to understand it. It’s just for pastors to understand, right?

The Bible is devalued in our culture

The Bible has gone from being the primary influence to all of society to in some instances people being attacked for having private Bible studies in their own home.

Some of the early settlers moved to America to avoid religious persecution with the desire to create a society committed to living by Biblical principles. The Pilgrims would spend several hours each day in the study of the Bible with the goal of establishing principles to live by. They wanted to conform the culture to God’s Word and make the Bible available to everyone. In the Mayflower Compact they stated that they wanted to establish a society for the Glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith.  

Prior to the war of independence the Bible was the primary authority on life and conduct and was the primary influence in shaping our nation. At that time the Bible was the primary source used for elementary education and was displayed often publically.

In 1781 the first English Bible was printed in America as the British had prohibited the colonies of printing their own English version even though other versions were printed to evangelize the Indians. During this time and in the early 1800’s the Bible was instrumental in American life. Mark A. Noll in “The Bible and American culture’ states “However difficult it may be to define the impact of the Bible on ordinary people precisely, Scripture has always been extraordinarily potent in American life.

Abraham Lincoln called the Bible “the best gift God has given to man.”  

But at least until sometime in the late nineteenth century or early in the twentieth, the Bible existed as the most coherent, the most widely respected, and the most powerful of those means by which American ordered their daily existence and made sense of the universe in which they lived. (Noll)

Now the Bible is being attacked on all fronts. Just recently, Feb., 2018, an atheist group forced an Arkansas High School to remove a Bible verse and a gospel song display from their choir room. Also the FFRF (Freedom From Religion Foundation) requested an Alabama school to remove their Bible verse display. But the attacks are not just in government facilities but in private businesses. A café owner in 2011 was told by police to remove a Bible verse display. This is becoming more common as a record few Americans believe that the Bible is the Word of God.

Most all secular organizations have some restrictions against displaying Bible verses. So the Bible has gone from being the single best and used guide for life to in some cases hate speech and the display of any form of it is forbidden.

But as the Bible was removed from our schools and our culture we are now suffering as a result in our churches.

The Bible is devalued in the church

James Armstrong said that “Christian doctrine has been devalued for the last one hundred plus years. Liberal teachers continue to devalue it by inverting the relationship between Scripture and secular thought. They allow secular insights to interpret the Scripture.”

Along with the culture impacting the way the church interprets Scripture it is also impacting our value of it. More and more churches are abandoning the inerrancy of Scripture. They have fallen prey to the attacks of the culture and have weakened the importance of the Bible as a life guide and as the Word of God. 

In this country the church has historically valued Scripture as the inerrant Word of God in the midst of attacks on it by those outside the church. Jonathan Moorland in his 2019 article on “Inerrancy and Church History: Is Inerrancy a Modern Invention?” quoted some of the church leaders which impacted early America such as:

• Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) – He said “Hence we may learn that all the Scripture says to us is certainly true. Here all is true; nothing false.”
• Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892) – Although an English Particular Baptist preacher he had a tremendous influence on the church in America. He said “I believe that there is no mistake whatever in the original Holy Scriptures from beginning to end.”

In the conclusion of his article Jonathan Moorhead stated that “the majority of theologians throughout church history have held to the inerrancy of Scripture.”

But as the culture continues to battle against the truth of Scripture it makes its way into the church. Certainly this impact has been up and down over the history of mankind but I think the trend has definitely been downward in the last 100 years in America. A possible beginning point with this modern trend could have started around 1887 when Spurgeon published his first “Down-grade” article. Spurgeon stated that “Believers in Christ’s atonement are now declared union with those who make light of it; believers of Holy Scriptures are in confederacy with those who deny plenary inspiration.”

The early churches position that since God wrote the Bible its original form must be without error. This view of inerrancy has now been debated by a lot of major denominations as well as some conservative evangelicals. It is not my intent here to discuss inerrancy or infallibility but to simply say that the debate has caused the church to devalue scripture and not to preach it with authority and passion that it should be preached. Some have taken the position that the Bible is only accurate with respect to the gospel message and not to history, biology, or science. So we now think if the Bible is not without error in all things how can it be trusted with the gospel message?

Spurgeon also said that “one of the ways that their (the liberals) theology was affected was by Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.”

Certainly the idea of scientific truth has impacted the church. We have embraced science as the source of truth and have tried to adjust scripture to fit it. Even with the history of scientific knowledge or theory changing over time with new information we still believe that science is the holder of absolute truth and not God through His word. One impact of that is through the theory of evolution. In an article “Compatibility of Major U.S. Christian Denominations with Evolution” by Joel W. Martin (April, 2010), he gives his survey results of several churches on this topic. Some of the common responses were as follows:

• Intelligent design is not science and teaching it alongside evolutionary theory in school classrooms only creates confusion
• That the theory of evolution provides a fruitful and unifying scientific explanation for the emergence of life on earth.
• There is no contradiction between an evolutionary theory of human origins and the doctrine of God as Creator
• We acknowledge modern evolutionary theory as the best present-day scientific explanation of the existence of life on earth;

The Bible is devalued in our eyes

Since the Bible is being downgraded in our culture and our churches we are being influenced to devalue it as well. We no longer take it as God’s message to man. If we truly believe it we will read it, study it, obey it, and teach it to others just as Ezra did. So make a commitment today to being an Ezra.

Ezra 7:10 “For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, and to do it and to teach his statues and rules in Israel.”