The Bible: An Easy-Reading Experience?

Not for me. It’s the difficulty of it that keeps me coming back.

Here’s my April column for the Holland Sentinel…

Before Donald Trump became president, he was a media personality and businessman, and over the years he has sold a variety of products from vodka to men’s wear, and from bottled water to a Monopoly-inspired board game, called “Trump: The Game.” Look it up.

Between 1989 and 1992, he even owned an airline, known as the Trump Shuttle, which he introduced as a “luxury airline.” During its brief life, it served airports in the northeast before shutting down, as with many Trump business endeavors, in bankruptcy.

Since leaving the White House, Trump has once again introduced a variety of consumer products – mostly recently, the “Never Surrender High-Tops,” gold sneakers priced at $399 a pair, which according to promotional material are “for the go-getters who don’t know the word quit.”

I don’t own any Trump products and have no plans to buy any. But his most recent business venture caught my attention – a “large print, easy-to-read, slim design” Bible. It’s called the “God Bless the USA Bible,” a nod to the singer-songwriter Lee Greenwood, and it promises to deliver “an easy reading experience in the trusted King James Version.”

The Bible sells for $59.99, and in the product launch Trump gave something of a personal testimony when he stated that the Bible is his “favorite” book and that he owns “many.”

Where do I start?

I resolved weeks ago not to write any more columns about national politics. After all, we all know which side we’re on, and so, I reasoned, why bother? But something about this latest news upset me in a way that previous Trump provocations have not.

And that of course is because the Bible is something I have spent much of my life reading, studying, and (for more than 40 years) proclaiming. My parents started me out not with Dr. Suess but with a children’s story Bible, and since then I cannot remember a time when the Bible was not my guide, friend, and constant companion.

In 1980, with a brand-new seminary diploma hanging on my wall, I stood in an old church, surrounded by colleagues, elders, and my parents, and made a public declaration about how “the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were, by the Holy Spirit, the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the Church universal, and God’s word to me.”

You could make the argument that I have something at stake here.

So, let’s get the easy stuff out of the way. If you would like to give someone a gift Bible, I found lots of them on Amazon (black imitation leather, Jesus’ words in “red letter”) for $6.29. These editions of course do not contain the U.S. Constitution or the Pledge of Allegiance or any of the other “founding documents” promised by the Trump edition.

These days most people, especially pastors, use online editions of the Bible for reading and study. They are free, and they allow the reader to toggle between dozens of translations, ancient and modern, including the Hebrew and Greek texts.

And then, there was the curious note in the product launch about the “trusted King James Version.” As a translation, the KJV leaves a lot to be desired, mostly because the translation is from Latin and not the earlier Hebrew and Greek texts. (Biblical scholars would likely give a lengthier explanation, but that’s the gist of it.) If you prefer reading a literary classic from 1611, then the KJV is for you.

My concern runs deeper, though, than reading the KJV or some other translation. The issue for me is that the Bible, as Trump presents it, is not something to be read, but rather a commodity to be sold. As I noted, Trump is a businessman, and his immediate concern is to make money. In this case, from selling vastly over-priced Bibles.

But there is more. As Trump presents the Bible, it comes across as something you have around the house. The more you own, apparently, the more serious about the Bible you are. I own more than most, so I must be really serious about the Bible.

Except that the Bible is more than a book on the shelf. When you read it, you find a call to a different way of life, far different from what most of us know or have practiced. We are called, to give just one example, to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. Not retribution, not vengeance, but compassion. Compassion for the weak, for the hungry, for the stranger, for “the least” among us.

I read the Bible because I am still learning these and other important truths. The Bible for me has never been an “easy reading experience.” It’s the difficulty of it that keeps me coming back.

Photos: (above) In 2020 President Trump walked to the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church, located just steps away from the White House across Lafayette Park, as protests linked to the murder of George Floyd raged across the capital and cities around the country. He held up a Bible for a photo op. (middle) That’s the cover of the God Bless the USA Bible, released during Holy Week 2024.