The tornaconto

I sometimes hear it said that we Christians must be diligent in reading our Bibles. There is some urging in this direction from the platform on occasion, invariably accompanied by some self-effacing aside to the effect that the speaker is most certainly addressing himself more than any.

This, this later statement about addressing himself, isn't at all true, because everyone including the speaker knows very well that the best place to be when talking to oneself is in one's own home or shed when no one else is within earshot, or near a lake or in a field on a rainy day so there's no one around except you. It's just a sort of convention that exists in church.
If you really did start talking to yourself in church to any great degree, clear of it being a Pentecostal sort of place where you might gain some small credit for such antics, I think it would be a matter of great concern to the rest of the congregation and might lead to cups of tea and visits to the doctor.

Back on point. Mentioning Bible reading and words like should, ought and need is, in my mind, an indication that the power and true character of the Bible have somehow eluded the mentioner, because once it becomes fixed clearly in a man's mind that the Bible is the Word of the Living God, and that every word in the Bible is true and is provided to teach us wisdom, to comfort us, to guide us in our lives and unravel the mysteries of the world by shining the clear light of Jesus Christ into the very darkness, I think it would be quite hard to prevent him from reading the Bible as a matter of urgency and with great regularity and no urging whatsoever would be required.

If I feel I should do something but tend not to do it, then generally it means my tornaconto, my self interest, is poorly recompensed by the action. I often feel I should get on with my translation work, but I dawdle and dally before cracking down to it. But I get paid for that: my self interest is quite clear - although I do admit to enjoying it somewhat too, depending to some extent on the translation in question. Anyway, that's work. But so is doing anything that we feel somewhat disinclined to do but have to persuade ourselves to crack on with it. I don't wish to denigrate the very honourable act of working... I am simply differentiating work and the slaking of thirst and filling of the belly.
So what's the tornaconto of a man who feels he should read the Bible more? Surely he seeks to please God, since he is not precisely pleasing himself because he isn't "hooked" As though you would have to persuade Mrs Stokes to listen to The Archers, she having not missed a single episode for a period of several decades out of her simple self-interest (and why not indeed).

But if the true identity of the Bible is but glimpsed, all men will bask in its glory with the utmost pleasure and satisfaction whenever the occasion arises, and no chiding, urging or bullying will be required at all, so those types of coercion can be reserved for filling in tax returns and such matters that entail some objective degree of nuisance.

Ah, but how do we glimpse this true identity you mention Prod? Surely it's a no true Scotsman you are positing here, since the Bible is the Bible and to preface it with clauses speaking of its true nature, as though it were a thing concealed, is bordering on mysticism or at least esotericism.

Look, I hear you and I think I understand. So of course I am wrong all in all, because we can glimpse the truth of which I speak by by actually reading the Bible somewhat diligently, a matter that at first might be accompanied by a degree of tedium because our understanding is minimal and the Bible quite a hard book in some places.

But I usually hear such urgings and self criticism in the mouths of people who do indeed know the Bible very well indeed and understand quite a lot of it. So what then? I do wonder, in such cases, whether the person in question has understood in his heart, because our minds are quite fickle sometimes and our imaginations always so vain. I do hear a lot of preaching in which it is the objective of the speaker to somewhat urge the congregation in this direction or the other, always backed up by much Scripture of course. It seems to me that the preachers in question think God needs a hand with his unruly flock, and that having read the Bible we mainly forget what it said by the time Friday night comes around, the pubs are open, and we have just been paid.

In the Evangelical church everyone I have spoken to professes to understand and believe that we are saved by grace through faith and not of works (and the Bible does indeed clearly state that), so why do they then so often preach works?

It is a great mystery.

I see what you mean

Although he had indeed just said it, Nearmann didn't see what he meant at all, other than that things were clearly leading up to the point at which he might politely elect to go to the counter to purchase some refreshments, which might involve some minor expense on his part but considered globally, he reasoned, any capital outflow would be more than justified due to the related effect of disentangling himself from an explanation of an esoteric morality system based, he seemed to understand, on an obscure interpretation of philosophy, theology, history, the world, and Birmingham in particular.

Birmingham, that is, sited fair, square and central in the Middle Earth of old Albion.

Not any of the other eighteen Birminghams situated in North America, not the "lunar crater" of the same name, and not the thus-called star in the Cygnus constellation, although on these two latter points it could be argued, he reasoned - largely from experience - that it is impossible to disprove one's residence in or sometime frequenting of an imaginary place, if that place is real in the minds of the hospital nurses.

Abandoning the faith

It was a dull Sunday afternoon, grey skies and dead air in the house. Nearmann was bored and depressed. Nothing great ever seemed to happen anymore and the main problem was that people behaved either as cloth-eared, switched-off automata, or as venomous snakes, ready to strike to defend the slightest territorial threat, and perfectly fitted to exploit anyone who offered any suggestion of potential usefulness, even the most passive and gentle folks, who could be neatly arranged to form flattering mirrors.

Booze no longer seemed to help other than to draw attention to the maddening torment of alienation. Even cannabis had lost its ability to deflect, distract, and enhance. Like when Nearmann, Barnes and Mikey smoked that bag of Congolese grass and got so totally wasted that they believed they had actually entered a separate realm. Twenty years ago.

He thinks back to his conversion, his grown-man baptism, just ten years ago. His punch-in-the-stomach realisation that the Bible was literally true.
But today, nothing feels real except pain and silence.

His progression through the church began at a big place in town with music and bands. The preacher wore chic Italian suits and was unreservedly dull and ineffectual on the platform. It was all a sham. There was a heap of money behind the veil, the Bible not preached, believed or even present in the building other than in some fourth-grade translation replete with innumerable errors and heresies.

Proceeded with a strict and faithful chapel where the Bible was preached, somewhat believed, and never acted upon

Shifted briefly to an unconventional assembly with heretical views and extreme devotion to the outward signs of faith. A close-knit community of third and fourth generation converts, a horde with glazed eyes and unhearing ears, forever locked in a mortal embrace of pretence and tradition.

Landed at a very grave and self important larger church with great reverence for the Word coupled, as usual, with a general disregard for the principles enshrined therein.

Nearmann idly wondered why men are so keen to be uplifted but knew that he shared that same aspiration. To receive regular praise and pleadings to accept a seat at the table and a place at the lectern would of course dispel the boredom and depression and replace them with a sense of excitement and vigour. But in the corrupt court of the corrupt king only the complicit may be allowed to speak. Only the most obedient courtiers will be raised up. The dogma they embrace unimportant compared to their ambition to shine or attain privilege: a signpost announcing their easy manipulation  and unconscious willingness to lull, deflect, stultify, mislead, hypnotise, and eviscerate.

So now on this dull Sunday Nearmann contemplated, for the first time, the possibility of actually abandoning the faith. He wasn't sure it could be done, because a truth once seen can never be removed from the psyche. The Bible notes that the disciples of Jesus shall know the truth and the truth will set them free, but Nearmann, bound by the chains of his heaviness of heart, had no sense of freedom or inspiration on this winter day.

The way, he reasoned, of disavowal must surely pass by the way of endorsement. No pair of shoes can be reasonably discarded until a replacement pair has been purchased. But Nearmann had already shopped in all the other supermarkets of philosophy and they had all conspired together to lead him into his Christian journey in the beginning. At the time he thought of it as point of arrival. An endless forging of new friendships in faith, loyal companions at arms, resolute and deep thinking fellow converts, instead of a port of embarkation on an interminable voyage toward perilous and mist-shrouded lands, with shadowy and mutinous seamen and a villainous helmsman forever seeking to drive the ship onto a reef.

Nearmann did understand the odd comfort of absolute solitude. The freedom to prepare his funeral home with care, arrange the bier, cultivate the floral wreathes, whiten the walls of the sepulchre. And when a man is truly alone then he is he not free to think and do as he pleases?
To sit beside the pool and observe the thrush. To wonder at the oily river and inspect the hedgerow. To smile at strangers and climb the hill to the parade. To slouch at a corner table in a pub and allow his thoughts to ripple outward?