When you grow up a preacher's kid, you read a lot of Scripture. I memorized hundreds of Bible verses because I got rewards for working my way through my denomination's steps for achieving recognition.
We were encouraged to read the Bible every day. That habit never got established with me. However, I figured I had memorized enough verses to carry me through whatever moral or ethical decision-making was required of me as an adult. Then I married a preacher, which sealed my fate when it came to church attendance.
I also went to school to become a school psychologist. Psychologists administer a lot of tests that have scoring manuals. Among the most important of those tests is the IQ test, which measures a person's intelligence quotient. The results are used to make decisions about a child that can change the course of that child's life. When administering this test, there are rules that must be followed by the psychologist, or the results won't be accurate.
A professor at James Madison University who taught me the course in test administration was strict about reading the manual. For many of the questions on the IQ test, the most frequently given responses are sorted into 2 point, 1 point and 0 point answers. Sometimes the difference between the 1 point and 2 point answers were unclear to me, and I would debate a response with my professor. Ultimately, we would come to the place where he would say, "Even if you don't understand the reasoning of the authors, you have to follow the manual."
After years of giving the same test over and over to hundreds of children, it is easy to fall into the conviction that you've memorized the manual and don't need to consult it anymore. I was well-trained, though, and did check it. I was surprised how often my memory failed me.
After almost 28 years of marriage, my husband died. At some point after his death, it occurred to me that I didn't have to go to church anymore. I bounced around geographically and landed in a place where nobody knew me. I could do as I wished.
To my great surprise, the first Sunday after the move, I was back in church.
A few weeks ago, back in Virginia, I was sitting in a Sunday morning service, reflecting on what had brought me there in the absence of any external pressures on me to attend. It came to me: The pastor was reading a passage of Scripture that I had probably once even memorized. "I forgot that the Bible said that," I thought.
Church attendance and Bible reading are not mandatory for Christians any more than reading the manual for the IQ test is mandatory after one has passed the test administration course. But when we do go back to the Bible, we are often surprised at how far away we have drifted. Memory fails us.
I still do not read the Bible every day, and sometimes play hooky from church. On the other hand, I am very aware of how important it is to have people in my life who do read the Bible, and who remind me of the rules.
We need others around us to say, like my professor once did, "Even if you don't understand the reasoning of the author, you have to follow the manual."
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