I have a 25-year-old nephew who is gentleness itself. His smile is shy and diffident, and his whole nature tends, naturally, to the good.
After studying something mathematical in college and getting the usual shallow education in high school, he’s found there was a world of rich culture and philosophy in books he hasn’t read, and he is hungry. He dove into the world of literature haphazardly, and every time we speak about his random reading list, I ask the same question: “Have you read the Bible yet?”
It’s a question many people are asking themselves today, and responding in the negative. But they are doing something about it.
According to book tracker Circana BookScan, Bible sales are up by 22% through October of 2024 compared to the same period last year. Print book sales overall, by comparison, rose by just 1% last year.
It’s a Good Book revolution.
Many of these sales are to young Americans like my nephew, who somehow failed to read at home, school, or college the foundational text of our civilization. They may be, again like my nephew, Sunday Mass-going Catholics with a few years of CCD under their belts, and not much more in the way of formation. In any case, whether from religiously affiliated families or secular ones, they’ve found an empty place inside their hearts and brains where the rich and meaningful narratives of the Old and New Testaments belong.
Buying and opening a Bible is a wise move on many levels. From a purely practical perspective, how can you understand or navigate modern civilization without basic knowledge of the Bible?
Start with the arts: Even in today’s secular culture, it takes some of that knowledge to actually enjoy and appreciate the beauty of things like good architecture, novels, or even music. Can Shakespeare be understood while missing the scriptural allusions and metaphors that are woven into the story lines and gorgeous language? Or Steinbeck? Can Western music and its development be mapped and fully enjoyed while knowing nothing of the religious sensibilities of its august composers? Can you understand the layout of an old city, arranged around the house of God at its center, with spires inviting people in their houses and alleys to look up always?
Then there are our Western familial, social, and political arrangements, which we too easily take for granted. Monogamy, the inviolability of children, the rejection of slavery, the dignity of work, the equality of women, the rules of waging a just war, the development of democracy — all are rooted in the ideas and values developed over millennia in the Bible.
Can these things endure for a people not actively engaging with the source document? What about the institutions which we all agree are indispensable, like schools, orphanages, and hospitals? These may seem naturally occurring to us, but they are the pretty blooms on the living tree of Christianity, a tree which will wither at the root without knowledge of the Bible.
This is part of the case I’ve made for my nephew, and which I suspect is in great measure moving the general public back toward the Good Book. There is something else, though, which is even more vital.
The thousands of years of prophecy, revelation, poetry, and adventure stories in one thick book whose sales have topped 5 billion over the centuries is not just a blueprint for the glories of Western society. It is also full of meaning. The loneliness, anxiety, sadness, dysfunction, and fragmentation that characterizes so much of modern Western man’s life can be laid at the feet of an absence of meaning. Why are we here? Where are we going? How are we meant to treat ourselves and others on the way to our goal? What are the enabling principles of a well-lived life?
The Bible has the answers that fill us with hope, answers that show us how to live courageously in a harsh world full of bitter and unavoidable truths.
Of course, I gave my nephew a handsome Bible for his birthday. Now when we speak, we talk about the significance of things like sacrifice and holiness, and how he can model his life on that of the heroes and heroines that leap at him from the dense pages. One day soon we will start to talk about belief and practice, and how the Word of God lives more gloriously than ever in the celebration of the Eucharist, and among an assembly of people singing his praises.
