Bible sales booming — but people more anxious than ever. Why?
At a time when it seems like people are consuming more content than ever by any other medium than reading a paper book, it's heartening to read that Bible sales are exploding. This is delightfully surprising to Evangelical Christians like myself who take the Bible seriously.
Indeed, Christians everywhere should rejoice with the news that Bible sales seem to contradict the cultural narrative that America is becoming more secular and less interested in traditional answers to life’s big questions. It seems that while religious affiliations are in decline, interest in the Bible’s cosmic message of hope is on the rise.
The Bible contains the grand story of God’s work, first among the tribes of Jews living in the Middle East and then in a small and growing group of Jesus-followers who were first-century Jews and Gentiles changed by the Nazarene preacher’s message of love. The Bible tells the story of how God made the world and everything in it good, but humans have broken God’s world through our sins. Yet God is in the process of restoring the world through Jesus’ death and resurrection. The Bible tells us that forgiveness and new life are possible through him.
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While there is clear reason to celebrate, the reporting on why there is interest in the Good Book is murky. We are told that people are buying Bibles because of anxiety in our world amid a tense election season and international chaos. Fair enough, but the better question is: why are people so anxious? Surely psychologists and cultural commentators would have plenty to say here, and perhaps we should listen to them. Yet the Bible itself tells us why we are so anxious.
We make ourselves anxious by the pursuit of wealth and attempt to console ourselves with pleasure, but these aren’t enough.
“I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my labor, and this was the reward for all my toil. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 2:10-11).
It turns out that there is a sickness in our hearts called sin which makes us anxious and frustrates all our attempts at finding peace.
St. Paul laments, “Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. But I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.” The Bible tells us that there is a cure for sin and anxiety. “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:21, 23-25).
The Bible tells us that we are anxious because we were made to be in a relationship with God. In reflecting on Psalm 147, St. Augustine prays, “Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.” This is why Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). The astonishing turn in the Bible isn’t that we’re anxious, but that the solution to our anxiety is actually a person. People are looking for hope, and the Bible’s surprising invitation does not disappoint.
Dr. Andrew “Ike” Shepardson leads the B.A. and M.A. programs in Applied Apologetics at Colorado Christian University.
