Five Reasons to Use Your Bound Bible And NOT Your Smartphone in Church

David Smith
12/16/12 - General

Now before you hastily write me off as a Luddite (someone who protests innovation) or a stick-in-the-mud, understand that I do probably 85 + % of my Bible reading online on my notebook. That's right. However, when I'm in public, I deliberately do 99% of my reading from a bound Bible. (Yes, I'm aware there's a picture floating around somewhere of me baptizing my own daughter back in the day while reading Scripture from my PDA). So why go bound? Because I think you'll find the experience liberating! But if you need more reasons, here are five:

1. You Will Eliminate a Temptation Factor: Though you might be able to resist giving your e-mail a quick check or sending a text to a friend, the willpower of others around you might not be so strong. Why risk luring others into the land of distraction when you're both to be about worshiping God together and building each other up?
2. You Will Encourage the Teacher or Preacher: You do deliberately try to encourage those who feed you the Word in the way you listen, right? Use a bound Bible and they won't have to wonder if you're playing Angry Birds or looking up those verses in 2 Corinthians 5. That's encouraging. Let them hear the light rustle of many pages turning whenever a Scripture is referenced and their pulse will quicken, their heart will be sparked, their mind will become more focused, and their passion will be stirred a bit more. That's encouraging. Deliberately encourage your teachers and preachers every week and you'll make them better teachers and preachers.
3. You Will Maximize Your Ability to Understand Your Bible: Sure, you can look up multiple translations on a smartphone, but that doesn't hold a candle to being able to see a Scripture in its surrounding context at a glance. Unless you're really working your mobile app hard, you're just not going to get the context in your head and even if you do, it will have been so time-consuming that the speaker will be way down the road from where you are by then. You don't look at the world through a paper-towel tube, so why look at your Bible through a three-verse window?
4. You Will Usually Be Quicker On the Draw: I've tried a number of electronic Bibles, PDAs, and smartphones. Only very rarely can I look up a passage faster on a mobile electronic device than I can in my paper Bible. By the time someone has just navigated through the menus I'm already just about there or have been there for a while. Especially if my paper Bible has index tabs. When I get beat is when it's a rather obscure reference (i.e. Nahum 2:13). Must I even mention that bound Bibles never lose their charge or need to be reset, either?
5. You Will Give a Powerful Visual to All Who See It, Especially Children: One of the most influential memories seared into my mind is that of an elderly brother in Christ who carried his extremely well-worn Bible with him everywhere he went. And I do mean everywhere except the shower. And it was obvious that it wasn't worn primarily from being carried. God only knows how many times that image has roused my hunger for God's Word. Somehow the image of a well-worn Otter box encased iPhone just doesn't evoke the same now, does it? And it never will, for it can't. Keep your influence as parents and grandparents in mind.