Literature is To Be Known, Not Just to Know

This was an essay I wrote for my English 101 class about my relationship with literature. I specifically focused on the Bible and my evolving relationship with it.

I doubt anyone has seen such as much energy as you would if you asked,  “Can someone recite John 3:16?” to a room of eager to please Sunday school students. In any group of kids from the ages of 3 to 16, at least 5 students would burst out with, “For God so loved the world…” and so on.

However, could any of them tell you what it means? Or, even more challenging, what it means to them personally?

Being raised in a church, the Bible has always been taught simply but my relationship with it, however, was not so.

My relationship with Scripture is the best example of how literature’s role in my life has shifted from simply something to know to holding an incredibly special place in my life.

Starting at the age of 2, Bible stories are taught to children in Sunday School. From Adam and Eve to who Paul was, the stories of the Bible begin to become familiar tales to small ears. However, at this point, they're just stories. At least, they were to me.

They were stories I heard on a tape in my dad's Ford truck as we went to Smith's or shows I watched at home while I picked up my toys. I had never opened a Bible yet, but I was on the way to thinking I knew it pretty well. That, like my stuffed tiger who didn’t speak to me, we were friends. 

Like most Baptist church kids, from the ages of 5 to 12, Bible memorization was the most important thing you could ever do. Want candy? Tell me three verses. Want to get the blue ribbon at the end of the year? Finish your Awana book. By the way, that's about 60 to 70 verses you memorize over the course of a year. Once, I recited an entire Awana book in 2 months.

As a young 10-year-old, I was not even thinking of the meaning of these verses or the life change their words included, only that shiny prize at the end. Every May for four years, I won ribbons and trophies for standing up and reciting Bible facts in front of audiences of proud adults.

I tried to make those verses mean something, but it was just something to know.

Genesis comes before Exodus and Isaiah's in the Old Testament rather than the New. It was as simple and dry as that. 

As a young teenager, I began to read Christian living books. The Bible was old hat to me, even though I had yet to open one for more than 10 minutes, and new books on faith were far more interesting. In them, I read that Jesus had changed people's lives. Not just fed five thousand or had 12 disciples (and their names are...), but that he had actually altered people on a personal level. 

Jesus and His words in Scripture were more than just things I "knew" better than my fellow classmates. Scripture was something that people would die for, something that people would dig to the bottoms of the Earth to get a book of, for it was so dear to them.

I learned that Scripture, like other works of literature I would come to find, was a match waiting to light fires inside of people. The Bible could be my dearest friend and my strongest ally if I would just let it speak to me instead of reciting over it.

Looking back, I see the growth of myself as a believer and as student reflected in my relationship with the Bible. I had to learn that just being smart about something was not what mattered. What did I learn? Where would this take me? Do I even care? The answers to these questions and beyond are what really matter when I want to know literature.

Mind those words, when I want to know literature, not just know about it.

I could tell you all there is to know about C.S. Lewis and still have The Screwtape Letters make no impact on me personally. 

The Bible has grown into a book worth more than just a book to me; it's my life source. It's where I go to when I'm broken, when I'm alone, or when I'm elated at how much God has blessed me in my life.

Like other works of literature, words have become more than things to know, but instead things to rejoice in.

I have learned to let literature speak to me and to ponder deeper the meanings of works rather than to just know what they say. Whether it be as ancient and dear as the Bible or as modern and distant as Looking for Alaska, there's a relationship to be built with any work of literature. I have learned that that relationship has to go both ways.