Article February 4, 2019 Issue

The living Word of the Bible

Ingrid Peschke

Adapted from an article published in The Christian Science Monitor’s Christian Science Perspective column, November 15, 2018.

“Is what I read in the Bible really true?” This question was posed to me by a high school student who was a very new reader of the Bible and again by my seat neighbor on a recent flight.

While I’m not a Bible scholar in the academic sense, I have been a regular student of the Scriptures for most of my life. I’ve experienced inspiration, physical healing, and character transformation from insights I’ve gleaned while reading the Bible, which in turn has given me confidence in the wisdom of its pages. The truth of Scripture is proved in part whenever you feel the love and the strength behind the words on the page and experience that inspiration making a difference in your life. That’s the inspired, living Word of God speaking directly to us in the present day rather than simply as words written thousands of years ago. My new friends related to this explanation.

In all the years I’ve read and pondered the stories and wisdom in the Bible, I’ve seen how it is truly “a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (Psalms 119:105). A book that has shed further light on the meaning of the Bible and helped me understand the practical relevance of God in my life is Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy. In it she wrote, “The Scriptures are very sacred. Our aim must be to have them understood spiritually, for only by this understanding can truth be gained” (p. 547).