But it was not always so. When I was in the first grade, reading was an exercise in humiliation for a group of us. Our teacher, Mrs. Berry, and our classmates knew us as "The Yellow Birds." Everyday, the teacher called the Yellow Birds to come and sit with her at the reading table and it was there that we read all about Dick and Jane and their dog Spot.
After we were through, the teacher called on the Red Birds to come to the table and they read too, only the Red Birds were better readers than we Yellow Birds. The Yellow Birds weren't as smart as the Red Birds.
After the Red Birds finished, then the premiere group, the Blue Birds, took wing and came to the table. The Yellow Birds were the low group on the totem pole. Everybody in the room could read "Dick and Jane" better than we. Compared to the Blue Birds, we were dumb and dumber squared.
Somehow though, nothing short of a miracle occurred as the year progressed. For some reason, I began reading better, until one day, I became Mrs. Berry told me to move up to the Red Birds! That was a big day for me, so big, I still remember it. I was mighty proud because I didn't know that pride was a sin, and even if I had known, I'd still have been full of hubris and enjoyed it to the hilt.
I started to read with the Red Birds and more time went by. Then one day, Mrs. Berry promoted me to the Bluebirds, and at long last, I had arrived! Now, instead of being looked down upon, I could look down on everybody else! At age seven, the cup of my pride was running over and I enjoyed it. In that classroom, I, and only I, had moved from worst to first, and was now sitting proudly everyday with the Blue Birds, looking down from my lofty perch (pun intended) on the lowly Red and Yellow Birds from whence I'd come. I was Joseph whom God had delivered from the pit.
Hey, this was back in the days before anyone thought of "social promotion." This was back in the day when you didn't get a "participation trophy." If you didn't win, sorry, deal with it, no trophy for you. If Mrs. Berry moved you up, you had earned it. Neither she nor any other teacher gave a moment's thought that it might damage your psyche to be a "Yellow Bird," known by one and all as a dumb reader. If you want to move up, then start reading better or stay a Yellow Bird all your first grade life. Back then, Bluebirds had to earn their feathers.
I have no idea how it happened, but something must have clicked somewhere along the line that year. And since that time, reading has been important, as well as pleasurable to me. Mrs. Berry never knew how many books I'd read over the years and that I'd write three; she was just a good teacher doing a good job with the pitiful Yellow Bird minds fate had dealt her.
There are far, far too many people who are Yellow Birds when it comes to reading the Bible. Like the Yellow Birds, their reading skills are poor. Oh, they may be the cream of the crop, Harvard, Yale, or Texas Tech graduates, but their Bible reading skills are terrible.
How so?
Because they're reading as if it's a Dick and Jane Rule Book on how to get to heaven. As they read the Bible, they read, "Don't do this," and "Do that," and they read it as if, by their not doing XYZ and by their doing ABC, they'll get to heaven. That's a Yellow Bird skill level.
The Yellow Birds just don't get it: heaven is a free gift (aren't all gifts free?). God is the great Giver: He gave His only Son so that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
He gives forgiveness of sin and eternal life without cost to us when we trust Christ, the Son of God, who died for our sins and rose from the dead, having finished all that needed to be done to be able to save us without its costing us a thing.
Yellow Birds are constantly seeing but not seeing, hearing but not hearing, reading but not reading. For the Yellow Birds, "believe" is a hard word; "faith"is even more difficult, and "grace" is the hardest of them all.
They see those three words over and over again, yet they don't read that it is by believing (trusting) in Christ's finished work alone that God saves them from the guilt and penalty of their sin. Instead, when the Yellow Birds see "believes in" in John 3:16, they read "works for" instead. They read it as, "Whosover works for Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life."
When the Bible-reading Yellow Birds gather around the table in Mrs. Berry's class and she asks one of them to read Romans 3:24, he reads, "Being justified through working for it;" he doesn't read what it's saying, "being justified as a gift." But that's a Yellow Bird for you.
She calls on another student to read Ephesians 2:8-9. He reads, "For by works are you saved through effort, and that is of yourself; it is the payment of God to you."
Mrs. Berry calls on the next Yellow Bird to read Romans 3:28, and he looks at the Book and reads, "For we maintain that a man is justified through works . . ." The Yellow Bird has missed it again!
There was one Yellow Bird that was the best of all the Yellow Birds, so Mrs. Berry asked him to read John 19:30, an easy sentence if ever there was one. The Yellow Bird looked at the verse and read, "He [Jesus] said, 'It is incomplete.'"
"This is pathetic," Mrs. Berry thought, "finished is a simple word, even a Yellow Bird should be able to see that the word isn't "incomplete," yet these Yellow Birds are missing it."
Mrs. Berry is getting frustrated with the Yellow Birds, but she calls on another to read Romans 5:9, and the reader says, "Much more then, having now been justified by our works we shall be saved . . ."
Mrs. Berry has had enough! The Yellow Birds can't read the simplest statements in the Gospel of John and they can't read Romans either. These Yellow Birds are stupid. Illiterate.
"Shame, shame on the Yellow Birds," Mrs. Berry says, and rightfully so.
________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, and the author of Truthspeak. A copy of his book, Microbes in the Bloodstream of the Church, is also available as an E-book on Amazon.com. If you would like to a receive a copy of his weekly Bible studies and other articles of biblical teaching and application, you can do so by writing sue.bove@gmail.com and requesting, "The Hangar Bible Journal."
If you would like to contribute to his ministry according to the principle of II Corinthians 9:7, you may do so by making your check out to Hangar Bible Fellowship and mailing it to 65 Teal Ct., Locust Grove, GA 30248. All donations are tax deductible.
Come visit the Hangar some Sunday at 10 AM. You'll be glad you did.
Other recommended grace-oriented websites are:
notbyworks.org
literaltruth.org
gracebiblicalseminary.org
duluthbible.org
No comments:
Post a Comment