Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.
Groucho Marx
I’ve been tagged by several people for memes. Memes are what bloggers did before they had Facebook. But now they’re back.
The latest two I have received are:
1. 
I can’t think of noblesse oblige without Bertie Wooster coming to mind. And if I am some sort of nobility of the blogosphere I have inherited it and people keep me around like the embarrassing nephew who is always besmirching the family name.
2. Books that influenced my reading of the Bible
I do want to respond to this second meme. I enjoyed reading the answers of others and their answers made me realize just what an uneducated bumpkin I am.
1. The Children’s Living Bible
I saw this Bible recently on my kids’ bookshelf. It was my childhood Bible. Not one but two of my sisters had crossed my name out of the inside and put their own name in before I rescued it. The illustrations, the binding, everything about this edition, oozes God’s love for little children.
2. The CEV Contemporary English Version of the Bible
I know this is supposed to be a meme about books that have influenced my reading of the Bible not the Bible itself but for those who consider a translation a commentary on the Bible not the Bible itself this should come as no surprise. My a-ha moment was in reading this clear-as-living-water translation with my children and realizing that they were understanding God’s word in a way they never could when I read the NIV to them.
I loved the messy, noisy wide-open interaction of a blog where anyone could contribute rather than the exclusive btrans mailing list that I had previously followed. The diversity of contributors and especially commenters broadened my view of the Bible, leading to…
4. Bible bloggers
John Hobbins, Bob MacDonald, Iyov, Doug Chaplin, James McGrath and more continually shook my foundations. Only in writing and responding to these people did I begin to reconcile the disparity between my stated beliefs and my heart’s core and discover a reverence for God’s Word that transcends fundamentalism and infallibility.
5. African story-telling
Only in reading and hearing stories about Rabbit did I understand Jacob, the antihero. And it was in seeing history turned to myth sometimes within hours of an event did I begin to appreciate the Bible as literature rather than an apologetic collection of proof-texts.
Real bumpkins don’t know a thing about driving a landrover through dirt roads under an African sun to a college where the students can afford but a CD-R disk for a makeshift Flashdrive to capture some of what their Bible teacher offers them, oozes it out to them. Guess what? And you’ve inspired me, quite an influence on not just me I suspect, to read the Bible by your blogging and Cyber Strummings. Thanks for that and this post!
I thought that was me on the right in that picture!
James, I definitely thought the line up coincided nicely with the character and personality of those named.
[...] Ker at Lingamish (always unconventional!): The Children’s Living Bible, The CEV, Better Bibles Blog, Bible [...]
So Iyov is the one with the cig/cigar in his hand? I guess that suits him.
John you could have been any of those rascally louts. Except for Gumby. You are not Gumby.
[...] Ker at Lingamish (always unconventional!): The Children’s Living Bible, The CEV, Better Bibles Blog, Bible [...]
I somehow missed this response. Thanks for the excellent thoughts!