THEY DIDN'T READ THE BILL

Fellow Christian-

First of all, let me put you at ease, I am not going to make a political point here. Now, let me make you uneasy again, this may still bother you.

Do you remember back when the Congress was debating Obamacare? That was a controversial time and there were strong opinions on both sides of the debate. Of course, the controversy continues today. My point is not to argue one way or the other the merits of the affordable care act (ACA), but to point out the amazing fact that most, if not all, of those who voted on it never actually read it. Nancy Pelosi, who was then Speaker of the House, was lobbying hard for the passage of the bill, but she had to confess when pressed by a reporter that she had never read the entire bill. She famously said, “But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what’s in it....” In fact, most of congress was in the same boat. Some voted against it, some voted for it, but very few, if any, appeared to have even read it. Later when the constitutionality of the ACA was brought into question before the Supreme Court the Justices also apparently didn’t read it. In fact Justice Stephen Breyer said to a lawyer arguing against the law, "So what do you propose that we do other than spend a year reading all this?" Justice Antonin Scalia went a step further. He erupted at a lawyer who suggested that the justices read the ACA by asking, “What happened to the Eighth Amendment?” The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Even Max Baucus, widely considered as the lead author of the bill, confessed that he had not read the entire thing. Some citizens were disappointed that our lawmakers voted on such an important piece of legislation without apparently reading it.

(I get why they didn't it read it. Some people saw the length of this post and didn't even get this far! If you're still reading congratulations!)

Once again, I am not trying to make a political point, but I start with the debate surrounding Obamacare because of the passions and inflamed opinions that seem to surround this issue even among my Christian friends. I've been in groups of Christians before where you mention Jesus and they yawn, but if you mention this or that hot button topic from the days headlines and suddenly everyone is tripping over themselves to share their opinions. The Kingdom bores them. It's the republic that captures their imagination and commands their passions.

This reminds me of the first day of my Systematic Theology Course. The professor shared a startling statistic that showed a large percentage of pastors in the United State have never read the Bible all the way through. He challenged us, if we had not already read the Bible to set out to do that as a matter of first importance. “If you are going to be teachers of the Bible,” he said, “you should, at a minimum, have read the Bible.” Makes sense, right? Well, to my shame I had to confess that, at that time, I had never read the 66 books of the Bible in their entirety, but I decided to fix that. (WARNING: Many a well-intentioned effort to read through the Bible has died in the book of Leviticus. I’m just preparing you…Leviticus will test your resolve.)

In America, the average household has 4.4 Bibles, but according to studies conducted by the American Bible Society and Barna Research Group a sizeable majority of Americans read from their Bibles only four times a year or less. In fact, most Christians give their lives to Jesus, and stake eternity too, based on the teachings of a book they have not read for themselves. Christians shouldn’t point out the speck in Congress’s eye without first acknowledging the log in their own. And there are bigger issues at stake in the Bible than in the affordable care act. Thankfully, the Bible is much shorter and much, much more interesting than the Affordable Care Act. It’s actually a pretty good read. Obamacare and its attached regulations are 1,527,165 words long. The Bible is only half that length 783,137 words. Some of you aren’t readers, and that’s okay. In Jesus’ day most folks were not able to read at all, but they delighted to listen to Jesus, and today we can do that too through such technology as smart phones and I-pads that allow us to listen to the Bible. (In fact, that’s how I first got through Leviticus.)