Although I sometimes feel that the car in the next lane is about to sideswipe me as I head home, I know that’s nothing like the grueling miles at the Daytona 500.
It is amazing how NASCAR drivers drive within inches of each other at nearly 200 mph. They all work in unison to keep the pack moving around the track; even a minor mistake can send cars smashing into each other and into concrete walls.
But what if the drivers were blindfolded?
“Blindfolded?” you ask.
They’re expert drivers, after all, and many times they effortlessly blow through 500 miles without a challenge. Blindfolds would really test their ability. They’d have to navigate around the crashes and through the smoke without actually seeing the pitfalls ahead.
Yes, this is a ludicrous notion. Even with the incredible ability of NASCAR drivers, it would be ridiculous to expect that a single driver could make it around the track blindfolded at even school-zone speeds.
So, Christian, why do you believe you’d fare any better racing the course of life blindfolded without ever looking in the Bible to see how the course is laid out?
Unfortunately, that is what too many of us do. We race out of our houses every day and into the fast lane of our busy lives without preparing for the pitfalls ahead. It’s no wonder the slightest trial can send us spinning toward a crash or leave us scrambling to make repairs.
Al Mohler addressed the issue of the biblical illiteracy in a recent blog, noting, “While America’s evangelical Christians are rightly concerned about the secular worldview’s rejection of biblical Christianity, we ought to give some urgent attention to a problem much closer to home – biblical illiteracy in the church.
“Fewer than half of all adults can name the four gospels. Many Christians cannot identify more than two or three of the disciples,” Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote. “According to data from the Barna Research Group, 60 percent of Americans can’t name even five of the Ten Commandments. ‘No wonder people break the Ten Commandments all the time. They don’t know what they are,’ said George Barna.”
Interestingly, John Adams, one of our nation’s founders, believed the great need for an American educational system was because it taught people to read the Bible for themselves. Adams said that no government could fully be expected to work unless citizens acknowledged the Creator from whom it came – an acknowledgment and understanding drawn from reading the Bible.
God never intended for us to go through life blindfolded. The Bible is God’s manual for successfully maneuvering in a broken world. God’s Word addresses every issue we could possibly face; it brings us to our Savior and strengthens us. Learning how to overcome life’s stress only comes through reading scripture.
Not only do many believers not know the scripture, the preaching/teaching ministry of the local church often has devolved into a time of meeting “felt needs” and “fellowship.” We must never let the church become a place that has lost a place of prominence for God’s Word.
Mohler concluded his blog with this incisive statement: “We will not believe more than we know, and we will not live higher than our beliefs.”
NASCAR drivers would never get behind the steering wheel wearing blindfolds and we should never pull into the fast lane of life without first reading our Road Map – the Bible.
(EDITOR’S NOTE – Jimmy Draper is president emeritus of LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention.)
