I was flipping through a circular we got in the mail from a Christian bookstore last night.
It is amazing to me how retailers continually create niche Bibles for every conceivable market. They had a policeman’s Bible, a firefighter’s Bible, a sportsman’s Bible, a Bible for each branch of the military, etc.
There are men’s Bibles, mom Bibles, kid Bibles, student Bibles, teen guy Bibles, ad nauseum. I seem to recall that the Word of God is supposed to destroy barriers (“Here there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free…”) and yet here we try to find a niche for each of us that requires its own Bible, in its own format, with its own set of notations and whatnot.
Maybe I’m overreacting, but it just seems to be getting ridiculous. It seems that the Bible as given by the Holy Spirit ought to be good enough for moms and soldiers and teen girls. Maybe the fact that substantive biblical preaching and discipleship is so lacking in many churches stirs the need for niche Bibles.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with these things, I guess, but it just seems unnecessary. It just seems to be driven a lot more by marketing and profit margins than anything else. The Bible is, of course, the best-selling book of all time, so everybody wants to keep selling it somehow.
At the end of the day, I suppose we should conclude as Paul did in Philippians 1, that if the Word is being spread, we should be glad regardless of the motives of those spreading it.