DEPENDS ON WHERE YOU START READING, Part I

Part I: “In the beginning…”

I have no memory of the Bible being a part of my life or the life of my family until I was of elementary school age. Mother and Daddy didn’t go to church and I have no recollection of seeing a Bible in the house. Occasionally Mother and I would go to church with Mama Brown, my maternal grandmother, but for the life of me I can’t remember how that happened—and all who would know are dead. We lived too far away from Mama and Daddy Brown for us to have driven up on Sunday morning before church time. So maybe Mother, my brother, and I spent the night at her house on rare occasions but I have no memory of that either. I do have distinct memories of going to church with Mama Brown when I was a child and Mother was there because I have a very clear memory of her taking me to the car and spanking me for making noise during the service.


Our initial faith usually begins within the framework of other believers and we tend to express our faith within the customs of that community. We hear the stories of the God our family embraces and without thinking we embrace those same beliefs. They become a framework for our life.


My introduction to the stories of the Bible, more than 60 years ago, was in the Church of Christ in Gatesville, Texas in Coryell County. Those occasional visits with my maternal grandmother to Sunday school introduced me to flannel-graph story telling. Sticking in my mind is Moses standing before a bush, tending his sheep. Fuzzy backed paper cutouts stuck to the flannel material stretched tight over a board. Flames were added to the bush as the story developed. Then ‘standing Moses’ is replaced by ‘kneeling Moses’ and ‘kneeling Moses’ is replaced by ‘barefoot Moses’ with little flannel-graph sandals cast to the side. The sheep didn’t move. The images and the story are still vivid in my mind’s eye—an encounter with God that changed Moses’ life! And I can honestly say my first encounter with God that would change my life!


When I was in the third grade Daddy leased a farm in Bell County and we moved to Belton. With that move Mother started to go to church and was shortly, thereafter, baptized. From then on Mother, my brother and I were in church every time the doors opened—Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday night prayer meeting (which was usually Bible study! I still haven’t figured out why we called it ‘prayer meeting.’) When there was a revival we attended every meeting, usually five or six nights in a row, sometimes more.


With Mother’s commitment to the church, my brother and I became regular members of our age-appropriate Sunday school class and seeds of faith began to be planted in our hearts. Dedicated teachers met us every Sunday morning and instilled in us a love for the Word. (At that point ‘the Word’ would have been the actual Bible, the book itself. Later in this spiritual journey my thinking transitions to ‘the Word’ who became flesh… but I’m getting ahead of myself.)


As I matured, flannel graph turned to interactive workbooks, workbooks turned to youth activities, and from these activities we would often stop for a discussion around an open Bible. Somewhere along the way we were expected to make a public confession of faith. When I was sixteen I made that public commitment to Christ with confession and baptism, starting a journey that continues to unfold even to this day!


How we understand the message of the Bible depends on where we start reading and I began ‘reading’ the Bible in front of a flannel-graph story board more than sixty years ago! How was I to know the lens though which this faith community read the scriptures would restrict me unnecessarily, requiring exact compliance with its understandings and enforcing prohibitions where there were none?