‘Have you not read...?’

No Christian parent who wants to raise ‘God-fearing children’ will frown at what my daughter asked me recently: a Bible. To be precise, she wanted a teen Bible. (The promotional phrase for one of them in Amazon says, ‘a Bible that speaks to their world’.) But we have at least half a dozen Bibles at home, different versions of it and in two languages, some of them taken out only on occasions.

Bibles now come in different versions, and mediums. There are the print, audio, braille, online and various electronic formats of them. Bible Apps for phone, computer and laptop offer different versions of the Word. The Bible Society of India website says it provides the Word of God in audio and video forms, catering to the need of non-readers and neo-literates. It says it has pioneered the development of a wide range of new Scriptures for special audiences and groups: the visually challenged, the hearing impaired, terminally ill, victims of HIV, semi-literate and rural audience, and so on.

The Bible is also a consumer product regularly repackaged and customised to suit the taste of a particular audience, making it the best-seller year after year. In 2007, some 25 million Bibles were sold in the United States — “twice as many as the most recent Harry Potter book”.

A Bible for everyone

An article, ‘The Good Book Business’ in The New Yorker, says: “There are devotional Bibles for new believers, couples, brides, and cowboys... such innovations as ‘The Outdoor Bible’, printed on indestructible plastic sheets that fold up like maps, and ‘The Story’, which features selections from the Bible arranged in chronological order, like a novel. There is a ‘Men of Integrity’ Bible and a ‘Woman, Thou Art Loosed!’ Bible. For kids, there’s ‘The Super Heroes Bible: The Quest for Good Over Evil’.... In the ‘Rainbow Study Bible’, each verse is colour-coded by theme. ‘The Promise Bible’ prints every one of God’s promises in boldface. And ‘The Personal Promise Bible’ is custom-printed with the owner’s name ([For instance,] The LORD is Daniel’s shepherd’).”
The Bible is many things to many people. Many Christians read it ceremoniously at the break of dawn and as darkness encircles the earth, the Word engraved on the tablets of their hearts or leaving an imprint as temporary as desert tracks the wind erases. Some pore over it to find solutions to all their individual problems. Others try to find new meaning in the Scripture in the contemporary political, social and economic context. Some die for it; some live by it. Some invoke the promises in it to bring wealth and health to themselves; to some it is chicken soup for the soul.
People from as diverse backgrounds as ever, prince and pauper, capitalist and communist, slave and master, techie and casual labourer, Syrian Christian and Dalit Christian, all have used it to their purpose. It has been a tool of exclusion and dispossession; it has been a device for inclusion and liberation. Uninformed readings of it has led to an environmental ethic that is destructive even as it has been an inspiration for taking stewardship of the earth seriously.
From Genesis to Revelation, it is an entire series of classic literature in different genres: Poetry, historical narrative/epic, prophecy, epistles, and more. Approaching the Bible as history, it provides an insight into Jewish culture and traditions, and as a book of law and ethical guideline.
Why is it that the Bible looks radically different to different people? Is it worth seeking moral answers in the Bible to apply them in our context, when the moral issues of today are very different from those in biblical times? Does the Bible lend itself to an alternative interpretation?
‘Have you not read [in the Scriptures] …’ is an oft-repeated question Jesus asked the Pharisees. They were known for their strict observance of rites and ceremonies of the written law and their traditions concerning the law. Yet Jesus’ poser meant that he did not subscribe to their views or recognise their interpretation of the Scriptures. He obviously wanted them to follow it in spirit rather than in letter.
So, how do we read the Bible? Maybe you know this oft-repeated quote by our Valia Metropolita Philipose Mar Chrysostom: Don’t read the Bible, but study it.
Kristin Swenson, a professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University's School of World Studies, in an essay ‘What You Should Know Before Reading The Bible’, says “knowing something about the Bible —  its historical backgrounds and development, its languages of origin and the process of translation, and its use within religious communities as well as secular contexts — enables readers to make sense of biblical texts and references for themselves. For religious people, such knowledge can enrich their faith; and non-religious people may appreciate better why the Bible has endured with such power and influence.” Kristin is also the author of Bible Babel: Making Sense of the Most Talked About Book of All Time.
“The Bible is not an answer book to our questions, rather it helps us to ask the right questions,” says a theologian friend of mine. “It tells us how our ancestors experienced God in their life stories and lived a life worthy of their calling. Our engagement with the Bible helps us to discern God in our times and to engage in ethical praxis. When we read the Bible our attempt should not be to find out the original meaning of the original author in the original context. Rather, we, as readers, should bring our story into the Biblical story and construct new meanings to make the Bible a living story in our times.”
One of the things Kristin says she loves about the Bible is its resistance to reduction. “By way of a few examples, there are several stories of creation and four different narratives of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Consider the coexistence of explanations of suffering as punishment and the book of Job. Yet declarative and absolutist statements beginning, ‘the Bible says’, and bumper stickers such as ‘God said it. I believe it. That settles it’ are commonplace,” she says.
And if you maintain that the Holy Spirit will make the meaning of biblical texts clear to believers, here is what she says: “Knowing some background information (the more, the better) about the Bible is bound to lead … to fruitful discussion. Maybe it's there, in the spaces of informed conversation about a multi-faceted Word of God, in the dynamism of humble learning and listening, that the Holy Spirit pulls up a chair and the Bible reveals its richest meanings.”

Living the Good News

When it comes to the business of education, everyone loves a good deal. So I was intrigued when I read of Super 30. It was very different from the stories that I had read about ‘serving the community’ or ‘giving back to society’. A lot of philanthropy these days, especially of the corporate kind, is motivated by a desire to make a name for oneself. In the case of individuals it could be just an ego trip. For social service organisations the reward often is a column-inch space in newspapers or 30 seconds on television.
Super 30 is an innovative educational programme run by the Ramanujan School of Mathematics in Patna with an aim to create technocrats out of 30 meritorious students from among the economically backward sections of society. The school helps these children get into the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), the dream destination for many students even from the cream of society. It provides free tuition, board and lodging to these students who are handpicked on the basis of their talent, family background and education. This year, 27 of the 30 cleared the exam. That is a giant leap from 18 in 2003, when it all began.
Ramanujan School, named after the great mathematician, is the brainchild of Anand Kumar, who, despite his academic excellence, could not pursue a higher education in Cambridge just because he did not have the means to do so. Knowing what it is to be left out in the race, he now decided to train a group of students for various competitive examinations.
Anand’s funds for Super 30 come from the nominal fee (compared with that in other coaching centres) he charges other students who join his academy. His institution now figures in the list of innovative schools in the world. What strikes you as you browse through his website is the notification in bold, NO DONATION PLEASE.
In this, I can’t but help wonder if Anand Kumar is not living the Good News. Had he not welcomed the Super 30, a good many of them would have had wasted lives like flowers that expend their sweetness in the desert air.
Commoditisation of education in India in recent years has increasingly left many bright young students in the lurch. There have been reports about a few students taking the extreme step apparently depressed over their inability to continue their education. Recently, there were news reports in Kerala about a boy who dropped out of medical school as he could not afford to pay his fees. That timely intervention by a few kindly souls helped save the day for him is encouraging, but the larger question is why should the poor be always grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table rather than be seated at the board?
It is that time of the year again when parents are willing to invest for their children’s education -- ‘buy’ admissions to various professional colleges in the country. It is also that time of the year when we open our wallets for what we consider a worthy cause -- spend a few rupees on the not-so-privileged for their books, uniforms and umbrellas. “Diaspora philanthropy” too works best now; every year there are a number of notifications in church publications inviting ‘deserving candidates’ for help from our Churches abroad.
Religion plays a big part in making us set apart a portion of our incomes for charity (tithing in Christian parlance). It is hard to tell whether it is out of guilt or out of a feeling that it will serve as a protective shield against hard times that we secretly fear. Or as an investment to reap rich dividends later (as Malachi 3: 10 says, “Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it”). Maybe it is a combination of all these.
Marthomites are never known to be tight-fisted, but what do charities mean to us and why? What are the values that we associate with philanthropy?
“We have the mindset of the benevolent master. Our missions and ministries are always mission ‘for’ and mission ‘to’. We are yet to understand mission as mission ‘of’ or mission ‘with’. Mission and charity always construct the other as our other. It will never help them [the needy] to get out of their wounded psyche and to design their own identity and selfhood,” says my theologian friend.
What can be good news from our Yuvajana Sakhyams for the poor and marginalised students who find themselves in circumstances they have not chosen and are helpless to change? There are no quick-fix solutions when the problem of education is of insufficient funds and inefficient schools and when privatisation of education is as much of a problem as it is a solution.
Years ago, when emotions were stirred more quickly than reason, I was guided into a slum by my seniors in the Yuvajana Sakhyam. It was called beggars’ colony. They gave them free tuition and conducted medical camps and catered to their ‘real’ needs than the needs we ‘felt’ they had. I reckon it was worth much more than the ‘educational kits’ we provided in our later years and filled the annual reports with those figures.

P.S.:
Anand Kumar’s mission is worth disseminating in a world where education is just another commodity. GoodNewsIndia (www.goodnewsindia.com) by D.V. Sridharan offers many such inspiring stories “of positive action, steely endeavour and quiet triumphs -- news that is little known”. He stopped updating GoodNewsIndia in 2006, which he had been doing for six years, when he had doubts whether publishing feel-good stories about India by itself was good enough as a service. Then he turned to restoring a piece of land in Chennai. “I no longer retain my early confidence that a sustained economic boom will be like the tide that raises all the boats. ...I further believe that a ‘modern’ economy cannot create true wealth, ... it can be destructive of what wealth we inherited and still possess. The true wealth of any nation is in fertile soil, abundant water, clean air, safe food and its people educated for independent action and free to practice it. I shall go searching for people who are trying to make India wealthy in this manner,” he writes on his website.
I have been told by at least a couple of friends that there are ‘good news’ initiatives by our own churches that are worth spreading. Please watch this space for them. And send me your stories (with photographs) or ideas worth disseminating at burningbushsam@gmail.com.