#188. Judging someone’s faith based on their Bible underlining.
Apr 29th by JonI have a friend that only writes with pencil in his Bible because there’s a verse in Revelation that says something about not adding anything to the Bible. He feels that taking notes in it violates that. He is silly and aware of it. But for many of us, seeing how someone writes in their Bible is a fantastic way to jump to some delightful conclusions. Here’s how I analyze the people around me at church:
Straight black ink
This guy or girl doesn’t play around. Other people might be dancing across the page with colors that would make Rainbow Brite blush but not them. They have a black pen and a furrowed brow and if they want to underline the book of Luke, they’re going to.
Colors, so many colors
This person makes the straight black ink person cringe. At church they typically have one of those Bible covers that look like their Bible is going to assault Mount Everest after church. Zippers and pockets everywhere. Out of one of them they pull a handful of colored pencils. Red for Jesus. Black for God. Yellow for verses that make me happy. Extra points if they have an individual color assigned to each disciple. “John, you are Cornflower Blue. Peter, you can be Magenta. Mark, I think you feel like Periwinkle.” La, la, la.
Sir Noteington
This guy is the most interesting because he writes in the margin. So in addition to just underlining verses, he’s adding his own color commentary. “Ohh, good point! Need to remember that tomorrow at work!” I like this approach because you can tell a lot about a person from what verses they focus on. For instance, if he’s written a bunch of notes around James 5:16, which tells you to confess one to another, please know that during the meet and greet portion of the service, his answer to the question, “how are you today?” is going to be 17-minutes long.
Stars, circles, rainbows, clovers
I think those are actually the delicious shapes of the marshmallows in Lucky Charms cereal. But every now and then you will meet someone that is like a map designer or cartographer. Instead of notes or underlines, they’re drawing shapes and symbols in their Bible. After a good sermon, their book of Romans looks like a map you’d find in an Indiana Jones movie.
I like drawing in the Bible. I think it’s a cool way to personalize a book that is supposed to be personal. And, if you take notes on a sermon you remember more of it, can reference it later during the week and can catch your minister doing a rerun or “encore presentation” of the message next year.
Comments
LOL – Last week, I saw each and every person on the list.
Yep, I’m a Sir Noteington. Not just with the Bible, but with everything I read.
I even laugh at myself when I go back and read my notes, but it does help me process and see the journey I’ve been on.
Hilarious!
PS: I’m married to a Lucky Charms. What do you think our kids will turn out to be?
I’m OCD about paper/book cleanliness. I can’t stand any notes, “dog ears”, folds, or tears. My wife knows one of the greatest things one can do to irritate me is to jot down a phone number on the border of a piece of paper, especially if it is upside down. I throw out notes simply to rewrite them because the handwriting was a little sloppy or a corner got a little curled.
My husband is a devout “I don’t make any marks in my Bible” guy. As he says, “I was brought up NOT to write in books. The Bible is a book, so I don’t write in it.” I drive him crazy, because I am a combination of “all of the above.” You can tell which books of the Bible I’ve actually studied by how much flourescent ink is on the pages…
I’m a “Colors, so many colors”. There, I said it. That felt good…my name is Marni and I use 47 different colors of highlighters in my inspired Word of God.
I took it to another level though. A few years back, one of my most dear friends ever was battling cancer. Her sister was battling spiritual warfare as the result of not understanding a God who lets someone get so sick at the age of 20. So I started higlighting passages for the sisters that were relevant to what they were going through. I highlighed in orange for Courtney because she was a life-long Texas Longhorn fan and I highlighted in blue for Britney, well because of both of them starting with “B”.
However, it’s kind of morphed into this cool thing. Once Courtney left us to go live with Jesus, Britney would be so sad and I would email her the passages to remind her of God’s promise to never forsake us. So when she now gets an email from me that says “Blue is for Britney” she knows she’s reading something I feel God wants her to hear
And I also busted my pastor once for recycling a sermon
He started preaching out of Luke and when I flipped there, I had verbatim notes and I’m all “hey, we did this April 6th of 2003!!” and I’m on the front row so I can’t sneak out to get Starbucks 
My husband and I don’t write in our Bibles… unfortunately we DO keep the sheet of the bulletin that has the sermon notes section on it. Yeah, it gets bad. Especially since our pastor is currently finishing up his 87-part sermon series on Romans. I think the book of Romans in our Bible contains more sermon notes than scripture!
I was brought up that you never wrote in your Bible. Mine was clean for many years – until one day my wife accidentally picked mine up instead of hers and she wrote in it. Amazingly I found out pretty quickly. I still don’t let her live that down.
don’t forget highlighting! the lazy man’s underlining. i have actually found myself feeling bad that i don’t have more of my bible highlighted, as if it means i only found a few passages to be meaningful. i do, however, like to flip through and stop where i see highlighting, to see what made an impression on me in the past!
My Bible looks like it’s gone through an editing process. I admit, I’m a margin writer, underliner, and circler. But, I don’t color code nuthin’ no. way. That’s going to far on my cheese-o-meter
Oh, and I break the spines on my books. I ain’t skeered.
MikeB, we are separated at birth.
I don’t write anything in any of my Bibles but my name (and that is just a signature).
I keep a handful of composition books nearby for exclusive notetaking.
Yes, Mike, my notes have have to be orderly. I have rewritten an entire sermon’s notes just because I had no choice but write something down in the middle of the notes.
I have a Rainbow Study Bible, which means that every verse has been highlighted and color-coded according to subject. I tell people that I did it myself.
The worst is when you mark in your Bible and then hate the way it looks- maybe your line got jarred when the page buckled up, or maybe you made a mark to indicate something, and then wish you hadn’t used that color, or the ink smeared….I guess I’m a little like mikeb. Is there help for us?!
MikeB…dude, they have medication for that stuff!! Just Kidding! I have my own little corner of OCDness in my kitchen, so, I cannot cast stones.
HAHAHHAHAHA!! That’s so me. I think I am a little bit of all of those…
oh yeah, you can call me Sir – I write tons in my Fave Book. Notes, thoughts, prayers, almost always dated… very intimate and comforting. Though I often wonder when I die, which of my children will end up with Ol’ Granny’s bible and what will they think of all my crazy feedback.
I also keep so many scraps of paper, notes, printed ProdigalJon postings, etc. in my bible, that I finally had to get a zippered case. NOT one with pockets or heavens no, no fanny strap or anything of the sort. Just a plain zippered case, so when I drop it in the church parking lot, all my most intimate thoughts and favorite musings don’t fly all over the neighborhood.
That would be bad.
High five on this one. I was going to email you this topic when I dug out my old bible from high school, and it was Brite, brite, rainbow brite, in addition to my prayer lists, notes, and other anecdotes written throughout. goodness!!! I’m an anti-writer now. I have evolved.
KO……I’m with you! I like to underline, and even write notes, but it must be PERFECT! Crayola has some neat erasable colored pencil/crayon things that twist up….they are great because you can erase them…and they don’t bleed through like a highlighter! (and they come in a nifty carrying case!)
i have a specific set of pens for my bible… micro .05, no bleeding, very fine point allowing for clean lines. i try not to worry about what color i’m using … but i do feel a little weird when i sit by someone that is not underlining… it’s like “what, that’s not as poignant to you as it is to me? the HOly Spirit must not be impressing himself on you as clearly.” and that’s gross… so then i remember that , there are pages in mine that still crinkle when opened… oops…
Haha.
I ‘bracket’ my Bible verses, usually in just a normal biro (whatevers hanging ’round at the bottom of the bag), but I write them in the front and back pages of my Bible. What are they called? The ‘flyleaf’s, I think. Or would that be ‘flyleaves’? Ah well. So the front and back of my bible is completely packed with ‘Proverbs1717”1John44′ etc. I’ve been doing this since I was thirteen, and its pretty cool to look back at what verses touched me then.
I’m all about the classic yellow highlighter. Not as firm as the black pen guy (I can’t stand the multi-colored bibles either), but still with a little pop!
Marni reminds me of Care Bears and hugs!
Well, I am one up on your pencil only guy. I have been studying the scripture diligently for 7 years, and I have never intentionally written in a bible. If something is that important and life changing, I should remember it. When I read the scripture again, I want it to be fresh and new..
This is an incredible post! You rawk
I’m amazed at how many combinations of each I wind up being. I started the notetaking process with just black ink. Then I added new colors as I read back through a book or chapter later. Now you can tell exactly how many times I’ve read different portions (and not others!) simply by the massive amalgamation of notes and colors…
hysterical! i have to say that i underline and insert notes in the margins. one time i misspelled a word, and it has bugged me all the years since because i had to make a little scribble over it and re-write it. i kid you not. the stress has stayed with me… every time i see it, i just cringe!
hmmm…. maybe this is a new definition of jesus freak?
They now by the ESV have a Journaling Bible to write in the margins now. Good stuff here! I usually as a kid didn’t write in my bible due to too small print and who can understand all those Thees and Thous.
I think the over-all condition of the Bible should be a good indicator of faith.
Ratty, raggedy work-out pages – the Bible is used a lot.
Brand-spanking-new, creaseless pages, smell of a new book – it probably never been opened.
My Bible looks brand new. I bought it about 6 years ago.
That’s a bad sign.
My friend’s bible is ratty and has plenty of notes in it. She is definitely close to the Lord than I am.
Something to think about.
My current Bible has really thin paper, so I can’t write on say, page 13, without finding the marks somewhere on page 40. So I don’t.
I wanted to buy one with space in the margins for note-taking, but haven’t. My fiancé thinks it’s better to make notes in something like a compositionjournal, to avoid mucking up the Bible. I think he’s not that big a fan of writing in books in general.
***LATE POST***
The pages of my current Bible are too thin for standard Highlighters, so only one verse is covered in lilac goodness. I do use multi-colored pens for marking the pages. The different colors are for the different churches, TV shows and books as well as what I find in personal study. I usually bracket the passages the pastor is speaking about and then underline and circle the “important” parts (usually anything in bold on the screen).
My Bible is also “Pocket” sized (although, the only pocket it fits in is the back pocket of my very plus size carpenter jeans. There’s a joke in there somewhere…), so I always carry it in my main purse along with my blank book that I glued a sheep to the cover of and I use for notes (I also have a separate pen for notes, but they are all in the same color).
Yes, what's the deal with pocket size bibles that do not fit in any normal sized pocket?
oh that's just sneaky. my dad is a black ink man, I am more of a 'i cant draw straight lines so i don't bother' kind of guy
i remember attending a youth church camp very soon after i made the decision to properly get going with a relationship with god. the key speaker was quite a well known guy from planetshakers, i think, and kept going on about how he never signed a bible (apparently that's what quasi-famous youth pastors from australia do on a regular basis) if it was 'clean' i.e. unwritten i/on. my baby christian self looked down at my brand new bible i had bought the day before in anticipation of the event, as clean and shiny as a new bible could ever hope to be. and Jesus Wept. no he didn't, and neither did i, but i felt distinctly crestfallen. i wouldn't have even thought to ask the guy to sign my bible had he not brought it up in the first place.
I was the guy who saved every bulletin inside his Bible. If I ever picked it up the wrong way, it was like a flood of paper.
"… Cornflower Blue"
Thanks for thinking of me Jon
my church had a cool idea. we have 4 colors of highlighters. yellow is salvation, orange post newbirth, pink holy spirit, blue restoration. then if you ever run into to someone who wants salvation you start at a certin verse and from there just follow the yellow marker. it’s super easy and it works awesome!
I haven't ever been able to stand writing in a Bible (or any book). Or highlighting. I can take notes in a separate notebook, but I am pretty OCD about clean pages. And I know I'm less spiritual, because all the youth group kids gave me that, "Dude, what's wrong with you?" look when I opened my totally white Bible at church.
But really, what if you start thinking some of the obscure verses are less important because they're not highlighted and underlined? What if you sort of stop reading those ones? Or what if you start skipping the underlined ones because they already grabbed you so maybe you've learned everything you need to from them? The whole thing makes me break out in nervous sweat.