CAIN you believe its from Bible?

For some reason, I’m guessing to prevent the chance of someone being offended, the chapter “...Or the Bible” wasn’t included in the mandatory reading from this book, but nevertheless I felt compelled to read it, maybe it was divine intervention. Most of what I read in the chapter was pretty much understood already, people allude to the Bible because it is one of the most well known books ever written. Just like people allude to Shakespeare because he’s one the most well known writers to ever exist. But then I thought about why… Why is (or was) the Bible, and books like it ( ie. Quran, Torah) that ingrained in people’s psyche? Most likely for the same reason Shakespeare is so ingrained in 20th and 21st century minds; because it was taught.

Long before the whole separation of church and state (school) thing, church was a key ingredient in private and public education. So whether or not you truly believed in God or in anything in the Bible, you knew what it was. That’s why there’s so many great writers who consistently, knowingly or unknowingly, reference or allude to certain characters or ideas from the Bible. Even if you are a non-believer, and you could never believe that anything in Bible has any truth or substance, its hard to deny that it is simply a great piece of literature, fiction or non. But its almost impossible to be aware of that if you are a person who doesn’t believe and isn’t pressured or forced into studying it, and thats not to say that it should be forced down people’s throats.

But that being said, it makes sense that in the years since the Bible has been forcefully removed from the classroom there has been less and less prose that is saturated with biblical references and notions.

I know I said the reason I chose this particular chapter was likely due to divine intervention, but honestly the decision to read was simply because of the word “Bible” in title. I was kind of stuck on which three chapters to read on my own and being a Christian I had hoped that I would have some kind of connection with this chapter so that I wouldn’t get bored and stop… And once I started reading, I did. The mention of several stories I had heard from sunday school or my own private reading drew me in like a fish on a hook. For some parts of it, when Foster would just elaborate without mentioning specific works or authors, I was in a trance. Then I realized that that feeling, the feeling of knowing something that others may not, that feeling of having an insider with the author, the “something subtle that happens” that foster mentions towards the end, is what I hoping to and did get from this chapter and from so many other books, movies, and poems that have the subtle nuances that can be traced to the Bible. I’m so glad this chapter made it into this book.