In the dark hours before dawn, when the only distraction is the beating of my heart, I sometimes hear a still, small voice speaking inside of me.
It says, “What kind of a morally short-circuited lunkhead steals a Bible?”
It says, “And just how ethically impaired do you have to be to steal five Bibles?”
These reflections stem from my discovery, on returning from an out-of-town assignment, that five different translations of the Bible were missing from my desk. King James Version, New Revised Standard Version, New International Version, Catholic Study Bible, New Jerusalem Bible–gone, gone, gone, gone, gone.
Without impeding the investigation, let me just say there is some evidence that these Bibles were not inadvertently removed from my cubicle, but filched, fingered, lifted, swiped, misappropriated or otherwise pilfered.
Can’t say I wasn’t warned.
“There is none upright among men,” declares the Book of Micah, “they all lie in wait for blood.”
On the other hand, the Gospel According to John quotes Jesus as saying, “Judge not according to the appearance . . .”
More Top Picks Best Reading Glasses For Small Print
So I patiently await the return of my Bibles and my faith in fellow humankind. But in the meantime, I cannot help but try to imagine why somebody would make off with five Bibles.
Was it a hotelier who had a falling out with the Gideons?
Was it a Robin Hood of the soul, who figured that the Tribune could spare a little of its scriptural wealth for distribution to Chicago’s biblically impoverished?
Perhaps my desk became a stop on a mischievous, ecclesiastical scavenger hunt; maybe somebody just needed to wallop some really big bugs.
My best and latest theory is that somebody was driven to temporary insanity by the endless barrage of summer reading lists in newspapers and magazines. Overwhelmed by questionable recommendations, the addled bibliophile decided to chuck it all in favor of quality time with the one work acclaimed over the millennia as “The Good Book.”
Indeed, if you had to make a case for the Bible as beach reading, it would not be hard. It has good guys, bad guys, love stories and epic battles. It has a happy ending. It has engaging historical set pieces, salted with eternal truths.
Here are just a few of the chestnuts you can find:
“Thou shalt not steal.” (Exodus, 20:15)
“Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.” (I Corinthians 6:10)
“Men do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry; But if he be found, he shall restore sevenfold; he shall give all the substance of his house.” (Proverbs, 6:30-31)
Good stuff, huh?
While it pleases me to think of somebody so devoted to personal Bible study to walk off with five of my copies, I do need them. And there are plenty of other books here on the religion desk that I would be happy to offer as ransom for the purloined scriptures.
Some sound profound, such as the recently arrived “The Presence of Absence.” Some sound simple: “Everyday Enlightenment.”
Some fall into categories that I have forsaken altogether, such as computers and religion. Even the titles cloy: “Cybergrace,” “Virtual Faith.”
Another overheated genre is sex and religion: “The Harlot by the Road,” “The Soul of Sex,” “Secrets of Eve.”
The last is a study by “Christian sociologists,” whose prose I skipped in favor of their authoritative-looking bar graphs. Among their more printable findings is a graph that shows much greater satisfaction among Christian women for whom lovemaking lasts an hour than among Christian women for whom sex takes five minutes or less. I think I probably don’t need to read much more.
Some expendable books defy any categorization, such as “On God and Dogs.” Its foreword hails the author as one of “a growing band of animal theologians”; I don’t want to read any further, because I am savoring the image of a herd of furry creatures who possess a systematic understanding of God.
I would even consider surrendering a new volume that I have found most useful, “The Doubleday Christian Quotation Collection.”
On one hand, sound bites are a columnist’s stock in trade, and I am loath to give up such a convenient source of material.
On the other hand, it may be that there are some quotations here that are more profoundly important to my Bible thief than they are to me.
For instance, “He that loses his conscience has nothing left that is worth keeping,” penned by Izaak Walton, still seems pertinent today.
Better still, there is the practical advice of Henry Ward Beecher:
“Repentance may begin instantly.”
———-
More Top Picks Why Do My Eyes Hurt After A Day At The Screen
Email [email protected]