A Look Back

More emphasis is placed on education today than at any time in history. I have no statistics to quote, but it would not surprise me at all to learn that the ability to read is more widespread than at any other time in history. Once considered a skill only for a special, chosen few, reading, the ability to share in the experience of others, has been a liberating force in history. No greater turning point can be found than the invention of the printing press; the invention that opened the doors to this liberation. It is interesting to me that the very book at the center of that thought revolution which freed so many from the bondage of ignorance is today considered the enemy of freedom and liberation. But from an historical perspective it is difficult to deny the fact that no other book has had a greater influence on the world, and particularly on western civilization.

A Look Inward

Literacy is generally defined as the ability to read. More specifically it means to be educated or "familiar with letters". Only a few short hundred years ago to be educated meant you were familiar with the classics of literature and science. At the center of that education would be a strong understanding of the Bible. It by no means meant you were Christian, or even necessarily religious. But to be unfamiliar with the words of the book upon which most of society and the legal system was based would have placed you among the illiterate.

A Look Forward

Regardless of your own religious upbringing, your philosophical inclinations, or social proclivities, you owe it to yourself to become familiar with the book that gave you the world and the society in which you live. Especially if you live in a placed influenced by the British Empire and the political impact it had on the peoples it once governed, familiarity with the Bible will broaden your understanding of what drove the hearts and minds of those who gave us documents such as the "Magna Charta", the "Declaration of Independence", the "Constitution of the United States of America", and the "Bill of Rights".

To deny the influence of the Bible on history, to attempt to expunge God and scripture from our past, or to erase anything religious - especially Christian - from the halls of our public institutions is an enemy of education and literacy.

You can disagree with the Bible. You can deny it is the work of Almighty God. You can reject its claim of authority and its authorship. But to deny that it is the greatest single influence on the political and social world in which we live is to deny reality. So today, as much as at anytime in history, to be unfamiliar with the Bible is the essence of illiteracy.