Thesis 22: Come as You Are (But Not In Those Rags)

Scripture readers in our church (folks who volunteer to stand at the front and read that day’s passage) were recently instructed to read only from a printed Bible, not from phones or tablets, and given a script to bookend the reading from “Turn in your Bibles…” to “This is the word of the lord.”

Now, I get the practicality of the script: it’s familiar, organized, and it can help nervous people speak in public. But no phones or tablets? In 2025?

Admittedly, my antennae are up around the barriers and the shitty things Church does all the time, but this made me literally throw my hands up in the service. What the fuck is wrong with reading from the Bible on your phone or tablet?

It’s a Church leadership blind spot, of course. Our elders are a very monochrome bunch of dudes who are living in their, uh, autumn years, so they’ve decided that their preference for hard-copy scripture should become church policy. They think that holding a physical Bible is superior to reading God’s word from a screen.

Hey, on one hand I get it: in one of my other lives, I’ve published multiple books and there really is nothing quite so special as reading and holding a bound copy of a book (especially if it’s yours). But aside from reading fiction and nonfiction, I literally read everything else on my devices these days, from learning new workouts to scrolling social media to mining good recipes. And yes, the Bible is on all of my devices, which also, if I'm honest, contains so much of what’s wrong these days.

But this is God’s word. Inspired. Our main textbook for all things faith. Shouldn’t we take it in wherever, however we can?

(Spoiler: Yes. A thousand times yes. Duh.)

Tech Bibles are still God’s word, carrying the same book sand gospels, histories and myths, allegories and parables, poetry and lament, genocidal and violent purges, awkward and misogynist letters to early churches, and all the rest of it. In fact, with our devices' connectedness, we have a universe of biblical knowledge at our fingertips, instantly, that we can access as we read. Despite the pearl-clutching over digital evils, they can make us better Bible readers. And finally, digital Bibles are measurably better and more reliable than printed versions because with app updates, new knowledge and corrections can be made almost immediately. (Yes, the Bible is dynamic and changing and far from perfect, so we often need to fix things, if not change entire books to fit our preferred narratives.)

But even more than that, if our goal is to spread Jesus’ love and mission, preventing people who might be willing to help lead the service from reading whichever version of the bible is most comfortable to them, the Bible itself becomes a barrier. Maybe it’s a young person who relies on the device for everything. Maybe it’s someone who needs accessibility features to make the text bigger or more contrasting. Maybe we can assume that people can make their own best choices about where to get their God-stuff…?

Nah. What people really need, according to the white, privileged guys who run Church (and more), is to read from a Bible that because it’s printed has more the appearance of legitimacy. How it looks is more important than any of those other considerations. In short, printed Bibles look more proper, more Church-y.

Does this sound familiar? It should. Though Jesus’ life and ministry makes it very clear that anyone can follow him no matter who they are, what they eat or dress, or where they’re from, Church has a long history of excluding folks for how they look (or murdering them wholesale). In this case, we’re gatekeeping faith with superficial objections: in effect, we’re telling people that, unless they dress their Bibles more nicely, they can’t participate.

This might seem like a small thing, and maybe in some ways it is. But make no mistake, it aims at the heart of what we’re supposed to be doing as believers, too. Creating barriers to keep others from worshipping or approaching Christ is antithesis to everything that we should be doing, saying, and standing for. (Along with things like white supremacy…unless you’re the SBC, of course, where white is clearly right! 🤮🖕)

When Church is getting better at keeping people out (and as a result is dying), it’s time to burn it down and start over. We can do better with more people, not fewer. We're called to, after all.

PS. Yes, I’m grumpy. The no-tech-Bible shit happened at a communion service where it was also made clear that only baptized people could participate. Which makes my blood boil — another barrier Church throws up —  but we’ll leave that heresy for another thesis.

Keywords: Thesis 22: Come as You Are (But Not In Those Rags); Faith; Deconstruction; Religion; Christian; Christianity; Church; Sin; Corruption; Scandal; Bible; Abuse; God; Jesus; Stewardship