BLOGGING TOWARD SUNDAY…

The following article is from The United Methodist Church’s General Board of Church and Society.

Poverty and Justice Bible

Highlights over 2,000 verses
By the Rev. Jack Day, Consultant, Health Care Advocacy, General Board of Church & Society
You could see it as a clear God event of the 21st century: an awakening to justice issues among many people who hold the Bible central in their lives, but somehow missed the poverty and justice part.

The awakening includes people like Pastor Rick Warren of California’s Saddleback Church. Warren wrote The Purpose Driven Life, a book filled with citations from the Bible. Warren has commented, however, that despite all his study and ten years as a pastor, he missed the more than 2,000 verses of the Bible that “speak of God’s heart for the poor.”

The fact that 2,000 verses of the Bible speak about poverty began to be mentioned by others, though. The Bible Society in Great Britain gathered staff and experts who spent months going through the Contemporary English Version (CEV) Bible to identify those 2,000 verses and others that express the attitude of God, and God’s biblical servants, to issues of poverty and justice.

He missed the more than 2,000 verses of the Bible that ‘speak of God’s heart for the poor.’

The result of their efforts is The Poverty and Justice Bible, published this year with well more than 2,000 poverty and justice verses highlighted in orange.

It’s not quite like a red-letter Bible in which some verses are held in higher regard because Jesus said them. No one is saying that these 2,000 plus verses are more authoritative than others.

What this Bible does highlight is that these verses are here. Somehow, many Christians have been taught to be blind to these verses. With the orange highlighting, you can’t really be blind any longer.

Jim Wallis of Sojourners is quoted on The Poverty and Justice Bible cover:

“When we were seminarians, the early Sojourners community decided to do an experiment. We cut out of an old Bible every reference to the poor, to poverty, to justice. After snipping out more than 2,000 verses, we were left with a Bible full of holes … Imagine my surprise to hear of The Poverty and Justice Bible with all those texts not only restored but actually underlined. The Bible full of holes has been replaced by the Holy Bible.”

Perhaps one mark of the highlighted Bible’s value is the people who object to it. A blogger who signs his name “jerry” calls this Bible “a completely inappropriate co-opting of God’s Holy Word to serve an agenda that is wholly political in nature by those who are more concerned with social action than they are with grace action.”

Hmm. Is there anyone left who would just like to let the Bible speak for itself?

Though it’s published in England and printed in China, you can get a copy from the American Bible Society in the United States by going online to Poverty and Justice Bible.

If you have a commitment to God’s work of justice, your toolkit is missing something important, useful and inspiring: The Poverty and Justice Bible.

Date: 8/22/2008
©2005-2008

Filed under: Blogging Toward Sunday