What is more, if you live in a country where more than 95% of the citizens are roman-catholics, you are being thought religion since the primary school, and as a kid, you go with Mom to the church every Sunday, it is very easy to get confused about The Bible and its contents.
The Bible is considered by many people all around the world to be the only book worth reading, and indeed many people still treat it like that. I might agree with that, but... I'm The Reader. I read everything... in a way, of course. As far as I consider it interesting.
Interestingly, returning to The Bible, among those 95% catholics in Poland (or more, like some sources state), you wouldn't find as many passionated Bible reader's as you might have expected. People tend to base their knowledge of The Word on: religion classes (thought since the youngest years - most of all in form of stories about events from Old Testament) and from the church (in form of "The Reading" - fragments of the Bible red by the priest during the mass). And that might be confusing. You might find out, that most people do believe in something, and they can what they believe in, and even name the most important people involved, like:
and the others, and they know their stories as well, but they lack the understanding of the details. Even the intellectuals. Not naming the young generation, who very often choose the comfortable mask of secular humanism, or even worse... Of course, it has its negative influence on Polish tradition, and there are some sings of its degeneration... But this is not the case.Besides, I'm not better. But I believe. And I know, that Believing in God is an important element of Happiness. And I got the passion for books. Yet, reading The Bible is always for me an amazing adventure. And it is not easy to evaluate, what is exactly the influence of reading The Bible on my life. But maybe it is always like that with The Bible? And, yet again, maybe all the books all over the world are The One? And once you read the one, you read them all? Or maybe, all the books are just The Book in it's numerous permutations? After all, isn't "biblia" the Hebrew word for the book? Never mind. I have probably gone to far fantasizing, but what is the real truth? And where you can find it? Well, there is no doubt, that The Bible is the right place to search for it.
The difficult part of reading The Bible is not in what it is, or not, for you or other people, but in that it is indeed an ancient, historic treaty, full of difficult, and often misinterpreted metaphors. I like to say sometimes, as a self-invented metaphor, that "it is not enough to buy a book, you have to read it too". In the case of The Bible you could say it the other way: "it is not enough to read The Bible, you have to 'buy it' too..."
