The Bible is the Sword of the Spirit, St. Paul wrote in Ephesians, part of the armor that every Christian was to put on. To us in Junior Church and Jet Cadets, it meant that we had to know the books of the Bible, all 66, in order. We were also encouraged to memorize many verses so that we could, when tempted, respond as Jesus had—with a quote from Scripture. (It was impressed upon us that Jesus had quoted from Deuteronomy to defeat the devil; could we do that?)
To test our knowledge of the books of the Bible and their respective locations, we had Sword drills. An adult—youth group leader or Sunday School teacher—had a list of Bible references. We sat, ready for the challenge, our Bibles closed. If you had a Bible that zipped, you were allowed to put your hands inside the cover. If you had a Bible with tabs showing where each book was located, you could not play, at least not using that Bible. You could not put your thumbs on the edges of the Bible, which would give you a quicker start on opening it and was therefore cheating. The adult read the verse’s address. We repeated it, sitting on the edge of our folding chairs, waiting to hear “GO!” We thumbed frantically through the Bible to find the verse. The first kid who did so leaped to his or her feet and began reading. Sometimes we were divided into teams, maybe boys against girls. You had to know the order of the books, of course, but some of it was just luck. Maybe your thin pages stuck, but Ed’s didn’t, so he got up first and began to read just seconds before you had the right place. I wonder now, other than the competition factor, what the point of the whole thing was. In that era of the Cold War, we were sometimes treated to stories of people—in Russia, say—being persecuted for their faith. And then came the inevitable question: if you were on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? I can’t really see that winning a Sword drill would be evidence, but who really knew the tactics of the KGB?
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Baptist GirlI was a conservative Baptist girl who grew up to become a career Christian, working first in a Baptist school and then in a Baptist college. For about three decades, it was very good until it wasn’t, and I had to leave. But the Baptists formed me. This is my homage to the good times and good people of the world I left, finally, at forty-three, when I became an Episcopalian. These are my memories; others might disagree with my recollections. So be it. Archives
January 2024
Categories |