My People Perish for a Lack of Knowledge (Hosea 4:6)
A point of pride for the church of Christ is that, unlike people in the denominations, its members "know" their Bibles. Reading the Bible, both as a group during worship service and individually at home, is stressed a great deal. Since the Bible is the key to salvation, it behooves us to know it inside and out, forward and backward. And we're always supposed to be able to give "a ready answer" (i.e., quote Scripture) to anyone who questions our faith. So most COCers will read their Bibles diligently, if for no other reason than to fill in the blanks in the Bible class workbooks and not get blindsided when the teacher calls on them to answer a question during class. Unfortunately, it has been my observation that the average person in the COC doesn't really know the Bible that well in the first place. Most people only read what the preacher tells them to read and have never read the entire book. They ignore the difficult or uncomfortable passages and stick to ...