“Born to be battered…the loving phone call book. Underline it, circle things, write in the margins, turn down page corners, the more you use it, the more valuable it gets to be.”
–So reads an old advertisement by the South Central Bell Telephone Company which illustrates well what our approach to the Bible should be.
And, importantly, the truth in your Bible will still be true next spring, when the updated phone book drops at your doorstep with an ephemeral thunk.
And like the Bible, the phone book is not as helpful or accurate when we start tearing pages out of it.