Memorizing the New Testament - Arrogance

There are 7,956 verses in the New Testament.  That means if you memorize one verse a day you can memorize the entire New Testament in just over 20 years.

When I thought about that at the age of 22 (I was a Freshman in College), I decided to give it a try.

Two years later, I was still in school studying Missions and Bible at a Bible College which required daily chapel.  During one of these chapels a guest evangelist preached the typical Pentecostal message about the Holy Spirit.

He walked the stage back and forth, as many Pentecostal preachers do, trying to get the attention of so many older teens and early 20s who have spent their lives listening to these preachers and seeing their shows.  For these types of speakers, spirituality seemed to be measured by how stirred up one can get in a church service. 

The preacher in chapel (the guest evangelist) had something up his sleeve that none of us had seen before - something that would stir the young crowd into a tremendous spiritual frenzy.  At the end of a forgettable message, he quoted the entire 2nd chapter of Acts from memory (the 2nd Chapter of Acts is the Pentecostal's favorite chapter in the Bible, just like Calvinists hang out at Romans 9).  Quoting 47 verses from their favorite chapter threw the students into excited and spontaneous cheering.  All around me Pentecostal kids were praising the Lord, shouting and clapping.  And while everybody stood and cheered, I sat in my chair, ticked off at the whole thing.

Maybe I was that person with issues who didn't want to be carried along with the crowd.  I've always had to set myself apart from others.

Maybe I was just too proud to applaud someone else's accomplishments.

Maybe I needed to see a counselor and try to work out my issues with loneliness and feeling lost in the midst of crowds.

But then again, maybe I saw a man using the Bible to draw attention away from God to himself.  Maybe I was turned off to the fact that he had just become the center of attention, and the words he spoke had no other meaning than stirring up the crowd, and bringing everybody's frenzied attention to himself.

After chapel a friend oozed out how much she loved that preacher for his ability to quote an entire chapter of the Bible.  I told her I didn't like it, which got her angry at me and I could see that what I said upset her.  She snapped at me, "I suppose you could do that?"  She was implying that there was no way I could accomplish such an difficult conquest.  I didn't answer her, but I thought to myself, "Actually I could, and in fact, as he quoted that chapter, I was quoting the same to myself.  Furthermore, I could do better than that.  I could quote you the chapters before and after.  Better yet, I could quote to you entire books of the New Testament."  But I let her have her moment and I said nothing. 

Memorizing is not something to show off as a gimmick or to use in order to manipulate a crowd - and that's what I saw that day in chapel.  People were stirred up to cheer one man's accomplishment, not God's Word.  That day, God's Word gave the preacher the tool he needed to show off his ability like a circus performer.  He was able to use God's Word to get crowd wound up in a frenzy.  Because it was God's Word, it seemed spiritual, but in fact, it was not.  It was not spiritual and it was not proper - it was arrogant and it was manipulative.

Memorizing the Bible should not be for people to show off their abilities.  Memorizing the New Testament should not be for the sake of pointing people to the person who quotes.  Neither should it be used to stir a crowd into a frenzy.  Memorizing the Bible is meant to point people to the One who the Bible was meant to reveal - the God of Creation.  As John the Baptist once said, "He must increase and I must decrease."

Every once in awhile, in the middle of some movie or TV show, some guy will grab a pitcher of beer and drink the whole thing down while the rest of the bar cheers the fool on.  I guess quoting a chapter of the Bible to a group of cheering believers is the Christian version of chugging beer.

For video of this subject, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJtG3nsjeWQ