Sacred Text

Whether you like studies and polls or not, most of us have to use them at one time or another to try and understand a world that has simply become to large for us to get a grip on all by ourselves.  In our global culture, even studies with daunting sample sizes can fail to really grasp important trends.  Since I was a rather horrible statistics student, I generally rely on summary articles with neat info graphics to help me understand the data.  Thus I present such a summary of  this Study by the Barna Group, which doesn't so much surprise me, as it does confirm my more intuitive observations about the church in the world.
While this was done as focused research on Millennials, I think that these sorts of trends probably apply to the larger population, it's just that younger people present the spirit of the age in a less diluted fashion.  We can discuss the phenomenon of treating young people like some sort of problem to be figured out at another time, I want to talk about the Bible stuff.
It was not a surprise to me that people who self-identify as Christians would take the Bible seriously, especially in evangelical protestant circles, the authority of Scripture is a big old elephant in the room.  We divide into tribes largely based on our interpretive methods (called hermeneutics by fancy academic types).  Scripture gets thrown into pretty much every debate we have, as perhaps it must, because after all, without the book, we'd be pretty hard pressed to say why we believe anything.  From literalists to liberals and everywhere in between, self identifying Christians sort themselves according to their view of Scripture.
It is therefore somewhat surprising to us that people outside the church generally look at our Sacred text with suspicion and perhaps even resentment.  The study points out the agnostics and outsiders don't see someone with a Bible as a source of light in the darkness, they see them as judgmental and possibly angry.  This is a major problem for us.
It is a fundamental disconnection between what we think of ourselves and what everybody else sees in us.  If we let the Scripture, particularly the Gospels, work on us and lead us to live a life that is shaped and transformed by a relationship with a living God, we will be much more effective witnesses than people who can simply quote Scripture.  Yeah, kinda, duh, right?
It may seem obvious, but sometimes we are too far into the trees to see the forest.  We get involved in defining and defending this or that fundamental principle and we miss the fact that God is calling us to a relationship, not to sign a petition or join a club.
Of course, Scripture is important to us on the inside, but maybe that's not where we should start the discussion with folks on the outside.  Maybe we need to wrestle with and allow ourselves to be changed by the words of this book that we claim is so important.  Maybe the peculiar phenomenon of Bibliotlatry (making the book an idol) is actually just another defense against really letting God into your life.
How attractive and spiritually alive does a bunch of people arguing about stuff seem to outsiders?
Do we need to debate and engage with one another?  Yes, but how we do that is of supreme importance if we want to remain a faithful church.  Another telling trend among the young is the much ballyhooed rise of the "Nones" and the "Dones."  People who have either never found the church a vital part of their spiritual life, or who did and were simply driven away by shrill dogmatism or just plain meanness.  How shall they hear? The Scripture asks us, in today's world, if your actions don't speak of a loving God, your words are never going to matter.
In the Scripture we can find a God who is loving, and merciful and who forgives sins.  We can also, if we really want to, ignore that part and concentrate on all the smiting that takes place.  We can use the book to imagine a world where the struggle for power and purity is all encompassing and where nothing matters but holiness and strict adherence to a moral code, which is sort of where the Islamic extremists everyone loves to hate these days go with Sharia law.  Does that look attractive to you?
It does to the insiders.
Christians need to pay attention to the way that Jesus rather insistently criticized the insiders and welcomed the outsiders.  If we ignore that part of the book, we're probably missing the point of the whole adventure.  It would seem as though a study actually backs that up, so does the the majority of Christian tradition (not that we don't miss the mark from time to time).  It's sort of sad to me that people find the church less helpful in knowing God than a Bible they find for free in a hotel nightstand.