#521. Judging people that use the table of contents in their Bible.
Apr 14th by JonStop, just stop, it’s too late. I saw you. We were just told to turn to Nahum 2:4 by our pastor and out of the corner of my eye I saw you flip to the table of contents in your Bible.
Don’t, don’t try to explain yourself. I thought you loved God. I thought that when we weren’t at church together you were off somewhere reading your Bible, but clearly that was a mistake on my part. How long has this been going on, this, ugh, I don’t even like how the words feel in my mouth, this “using the table of contents to find books of the Bible?”
I felt like we had made so much progress. When we first met you had a Bible with those indents, those “dumb thumbs.” As in, “I’m dumb, I can’t find Titus, here is where I place my thumb.” But we got through that, we pushed through that and got you a grown up Bible without indents marking the different books.
And then today, today I catch you using the table of contents?
Who are you?
I don’t even know you any more.
Sure, you can find Psalms. Congratulations, you know where Psalms is. Everyone can find that book. It’s 60 pages long and in the middle. Yeah, that’s right, in addition to the location of the books of the Bible I know the length of each book.
Do you know what I did with my table of contents? I ripped it out and rolled it into a homemade shofar horn that I blow when it’s time for my family to come down and read our nightly Bible studies.
Go on, look up Nahum. It’s too late to save face now. You’ll find it on page 1466 and it’s only seven pages long. But what am I telling you for? You’ve probably confused Nahum with the Marvel comics anti-hero, Namor the Sub-Mariner, prince of Atlantis, grandson of the Atlantean Emperor Thakorr.
I’m so embarrassed for you.
Comments
hilarious. I use the toc all the time, I’m not gonna lie. But even more hilarious is the fact that there may be people reading this blog who miss the sarcasm and think you literally ripped out the TOC and made it into a shofar horn. lol wow.
Beautiful! I once had a youth leader who forbade the use of the table of contents.
homemade shofar… there’s no way I can explain my uncontrolled laughter over this to my prechristian office mate.
(Don’t worry, this is during lunch.)
I can’t even tell you the hillarity that this post spawned between several of my friends and our Bible study teacher who actually starts her lessons with, “Easiest way to find verse X is to open up your Bible to the table of contents. It’s on page Y in my Bible.” Clearly, she’s leading us all astray and we are failures as Christians.
So funny! True too.
Oh my gosh…love the paper shofar idea. Haha!
This is for Sara…
Qat is sort of like tobacco, it’s used in the middle east. It’s a leaf that is chewed and provides a mild hallucinogenic quality (I believe). anyway, it’s nasty stuff and really affects the men of the region who use it.
Your vocab lesson for the day!
Seriously? I JUST subscribed to your blog and you’re yelling about my embarrassingly bad knowledge of the order of books in the Good Book? Ouch!
According to our pastor, the TOC is one of the books of the Bible…
But it’s a NEW Bible.
Love this!
Of course I know the books of the Bible! I also know the preamble to the Constitution.
i literally laughed out loud at this and made everyone in the room with me stare at me.
that was fun.
i think my fav. part is when you said you ripped your table of contents out and use it as a shofar horn. hahaha.
AWANA taught me not to have to look in my table of contents. so ha! but i do teach my first graders in sunday school to look up the book in their table of contents…yeah, i’m a bad teacher. we should be singing books of the bible songs like i learned in sunday school. because those songs were dang awesome.
Shofar horn? Intense my friend
the dakotas are full of satire. seriously. how could we not be?
I was so guilty of that attitude when I was a baby Christian, that had just read the entire bible (thinking I would never have to read it again), watching my peers with derision as they looked up minor prophet books in the dreaded TOC. This post reminds me of how much of a jerk I must of been back in those days. I’m better now, thank God!
I’ve done this. I stopped after I once accidentally grabbed my dad’s bible, which uses the Jewish order, which is completely different. So confusing.
I really hate when jokey preachers say “Raise your hand if you’ve read Nahum chapter 4!” You raise your hand because you figure that if you’ve read the Bible through, you’ve read Nahum 4. Then he tells everybody there IS no Nahum 4 and you look like the sort of unholy jerkette who would lie about reading the Bible.
You really have to look them up in the table of contents if your Bible is so full of bulletins that your Bible now contains 100 more pages than it should. hehe.
I may want to find Luke but there are so many bulletins in Mark, that is where I flip to.
I am definitely guilty of this. I don’t like the tabs. To me they just scream, “Hey, I don’t know the books of the Bible and I don’t care who knows it.” And yes, I know that’s a problem. However, while I don’t think it’s right to judge or be judged, I do believe that learning the books of the Bible is a healthy thing to do.
Two words… they used to be called “Sword Drills”… find the reference and be the first one to stand up and read it…
The whole discussion gives new insight into “rightly dividing the word of truth…”
Sword drills worked for learning and retaining where things are… now if I could still stand up…
Still, the best way remains — hiding it in your heart in a way that comes back to you, moment by moment.
Catching up after being on vacation… Very funny post!
“Dumb thumbs” really helped me learn the order of the books when I became a Christian. And since it’s faster than a table of contents I didn’t feel like I was always lagging behind…
heehee….Hezekiah sounds so authentic…shame on me!..i used to be able to do the old testament…but now, i basically know the region in which to flip through…cannot tell you what is between what and what if my life depended on it..oh wait..Matthew, Mark, Luke and John…Acts? lol…okay, so i do take my Bible reading seriously…
Wow, I have Bible tabs. Is that better or worse than looking in the table of contents. But, in a quick draw I bet I can find a book of the Bible faster than you!
I never learned the song. I will check iTunes or YouTube.
I think it is okay that Donald has to sing the song. I sometimes have to sing the alphabet to remember where a letter is when I am filing.
I suppose that is shameful too.
37"Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. 38Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."
I am not able to find a certain book or passage without help because of trama to my brain. Shall I stop worshiping the Lord because I offend all of you? Why are you judging me watching me struggle? Wouldn't it be better just to take my shaky hand and guide me to where we need to be.
After reading through these posts, I know I will not find help here.
This post is a sarcastic parody of the people who sometimes take a bit too much pride in how well they know their bibles. It is not meant to be an attack on people who have genuine reasons why finding bible passages may be difficult.
[...] and thought I’d share it. I like how he writes and there are some funny posts. Here’s one that I thought was [...]
HAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA i loved the shofar part….
[...] you want to go (although I can’t see it being too much faster than using the table of contents, which I don’t judge you for). The topical index also seems very well done. It moves like a flow chart from more general [...]
you guys are hilarious thanks for the laugh and yes people really do think like that. Thanks goodness the Lord has more grace on us then our fellow believers. Hey anyone know where to get a dumb thumb bible I want to buy my dad one.
hahah
Hey! Give me a break. Using the old fashioned method of "Psalms is in the middle" doesn't work anymore. The middle of my everyday Bible is the middle of study material and index in the back. So, yeah. I use the tabs and even sometimes the TOC to get to the verse before it's too late.
As a long time "church kid" (no ministerial pedigree in my genealogy, but I was voted "Most Spiritual" of my 8th grade class during my Christian school years. Whoot! Whoot!), I can usually find the chapter and verse in less time than it takes me to locate the TOC. Thanks to many, many hours logged competing in "Sword Drills", or the even more excruciating exercise of the Pastor randomly picking a section of the Bible and endlessly reading while we frantically tried to find where he was so he would stop.
I guess credit should also be given to my 7th grade teacher who made the entire class recite the books of the Bible (both Testaments) forward AND backward, and also how to correctly spell all of them. Probably one of the supporting reasons that I nabbed the Super Christian award the next year.
Hahaha, I relate to this post quite a bit! Was born, raised, and graduated from the AWANA program (that's right, it's not plural) and can speed-recite all the books of the Bible along with the best of them. Not memorize because I can get to biblegateway.com on my phone? Pish posh. Leave my Bible at home for church because they always put the verses up on the screen? Madness, I tell you!