Following the Manual

                When you grow up a “preacher’s kid” you read a lot of Scripture.   I memorized hundreds of Bible verses because I got rewards for working my way through my denomination’s steps for achieving recognition.

                We were encouraged to read the Bible every day.  That habit never got established with me.  However, I figured I had memorized enough verses to carry me through whatever moral or ethical decision making was required of m e as an adult.  Then I married a preacher, which sealed my fate when it came to church attendance.

 I also went to school to become a school psychologist.  Psychologists administer a lot of tests which have scoring manuals.  Among the most important of those tests is the I.Q. test, which measures a person’s “Intelligence Quotient.”  The results are used to make decisions about a child that can change the course of that child’s life.  There are rules that must be followed by the psychologist or the results won’t be accurate. 

                The professor at James Madison University that taught the course in test administration was strict about reading the manual..  For many of the questions on the I.Q. test the most frequently given responses are sorted into 2 point, 1 point, and 0 point answers.   Sometimes the difference between the 1 point and 2 point answers were unclear to me.    I would debate a response with the professor.    Ultimately, however, we would come to the place where he would say, “Even if you don’t understand the reasoning of the authors, you have to follow the manual.” 

                After years of giving the same test over and over to hundreds of children it is easy to fall into the conviction that one has memorized the manual, and doesn’t need to consult it anymore.  I was well trained, though, and did check it.  I was surprised how often my memory failed me. 

                After almost twenty-eight years of marriage my husband died.  At some point during the aftermath of that event it occurred to me that I didn’t have to go to church anymore.   I bounced around geographically, and landed in a place where “nobody knew me.  I could do as I wished.  To my great surprise, the first Sunday after the move I was in church.

                A few Sundays ago, back in Virginia, I was sitting in the Sunday morning service reflecting on what had brought me there in the absence of any external pressures on me to attend.  It came to me.  The pastor was reading a passage of scripture that I had probably once even memorized.  .  “I forgot that the Bible said that,” I thought.

  Church attendance and Bible reading are not mandatory for Christians any more than reading the manual for the I.Q. test is mandatory after one has passed the Test Administration course.    When we do go back to the Bible, though, we are often surprised at how far away we have drifted.  Memory fails us.

                I still do not read the Bible every day, and sometimes play hooky from church.   On the other hand, I am very aware of how important it is to have people in my life who do read the Bible, and remind me of the rules.  We need others around us to say, like my professor once did, “Even if you don’t understand the reasoning of the author, you have to follow the manual.”