The Most Feard Book in the World

I was browsing through the For Sale books at the local public library down near my in-law’s home in South Carolina a few days ago. Not much to offer, but they had a decent-sized selection of children’s books, usually for fifty cents or a dollar apiece. It’s where Little One found that Frankenstein book re-written for a fourth-grade mind that she read last summer with me.

Suddenly, the Children’s Bible I had as a kid leaped off the shelves at me. Memories of reading it with my seven or eight-year-old feet pressed firmly against the heating ducts flooded forth in a deluge. The illustrations especially raised goosebumps, and though I could not distinctly recall a particular one, a sensation of familiarity enveloped me. I had seen these drawings and read these stories and spent a lot of time with this book thirty-five years ago.

Cost: $2. It was a hardcover.

So I brought it over to the counter to pay for it.

“All done?” the librarian asked. She was perhaps ten years older than me, attractive and thin and wearing a very sophisticated outfit. Not exactly the stereotypical matronly spinster the word “librarian” conjures up.

“Yes. I think I’ll go with the Children’s Bible.”

“Oh.” She paused. “I didn’t know Bibles were allowed here.”

Huh? I was still in a good mood from the discovery, so I asked with a chuckle, “Why not?”

“I don’t know.” She thought for a moment as she studied at the cover, then added, quickly, “Not that I agree with it, or anything. That’ll be two dollars.”

I handed over the money and left. Driving back to the house, a few thoughts popped into my mind. I should have brought them up with her, but I’m a slow thinker. First off, what did that “here” mean that she referred to? Did she mean that Bibles were not allowed in the library, or just in the For Sale section? Regardless, who would make such a decision? And why single out Bibles?

Then I realized how true that cliché is, how all it takes for evil to triumph is for good people not to rise up and take a stand. This woman did not agree with whoever set the policy on Bibles – and I admit, I don’t know the exact policy, so I may be making too much of this. Surveys show variously that 95 percent of this country believes in a deity, and 80 percent of this country considers itself Christian. Yet you hear a lot of how a fringe atheistic minority is bullying a lot of us common folk.

But it reinforces in my mind that the Bible is without a doubt the most feared book in the world.