As the summer vacation season comes to a close, allow me to unload some odds and ends—some unconnected thoughts from the research and reading that I’ve come across in recent weeks:
Reading woes
Christian journalist Lauren Smyth, reporting for WORLD Magazine, Aug. 1, detailed “a literacy crisis” that Americans are facing. Nearly one-fourth of U.S. adults are illiterate, she writes, and “130 million people can’t read a simple story to their children or sound out more than a few basic words.” While global literacy rates have increased, the statistics in the United States are on the decline.
“Both literacy and numeracy among U.S. adults have been on a steady decline for at least a decade, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic,” Smyth reports. “Now, more than half of U.S. adults can’t read beyond a sixth-grade level.”
While her article notes the social and economic impact of such a decline in literacy, I thought of another: What does Americans’ decline in literacy mean for their ability to read the Bible?
Earlier this year, Lifeway Research reported that less than 1-in-3 churchgoers commit to daily Bible reading. Could it be that some non-Bible readers within churches struggle to read, in general? How many churches encourage general literacy? The decline of literacy presents a problem for the nation, but might it also present an avenue for ministry?
Thankfully, the annals of church history give us hope: Through the centuries, we hear of illiterate men and women who have taught themselves how to read, simply from a desire to experience God’s Word for themselves. Let’s pray that many today will do the same—and, within our churches, let’s do what we can to help them do so.
Beauty from the trash pit
A native of Lisbon, Portugal, artist Artur Bordalo—also know as Bordalo II—has gained attention for finding beauty in trash pits and junk yards. Out of an assortment of rubbish—from rubber tires and other auto wreckage, to plastic bottles, electrical cables, aluminum cans, scrap wood, ropes, melted trash bins, worn-out sofas, shopping carts and scraps of yard furniture—he has created large and colorful animal sculptures.
These works of art include sculptures of bunnies, chimps, gorillas, jellyfish, badgers, frogs, mountain lions, lynxes, cranes, squirrels, bears and lions. His largest mural made from trash, called “Moose Father and Baby,” required 2,000 pounds of plastic, and reaches 82 feet in height and 131 feet in width.
I appreciate Bordalo’s artwork. Not only is it unusually beautiful, but it reflects a spiritual reality: The Bible tells us how God has worked from age to age to bring beauty to individuals wallowing in the trash pit of sin. “Therefore,” the apostle Paul writes, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (1 Cor 5:17).
This is a true trash-to-treasure story: Made one with Christ by faith, we are justified by his death; our guilt and shame are washed away. By the indwelling of Christ’s Spirit, we are sanctified—transformed day-by-day into the image of the One who saved us. Moreover, we look forward with hope to the day of our glorification—when Christ will raise us from the grave to give us vibrant, imperishable bodies; death and decay will be no more. He will bring a new heaven and new earth, making all things good and beautiful as we dwell in His presence forever.
Ignorance of heaven’s declaration
Late last December, Missouri Baptists sadly lost one of our outstanding ministers—namely, Phillip Shuford, who served faithfully as director of missions for the Tri-County Baptist Association.
Last week, Phillip came to my mind as I was reading a brief history of the Scientific Revolution—that historical transformation of the 1500s and 1600s where Westerners learned that the earth doesn’t stand still at the center of the cosmos, but that it actually moves, joining the other planets in their heavenly dance around the sun.
In this book, historian Lawrence M. Principe notes that, while medieval people were incorrect about the place of the earth in the cosmos, they were very familiar with the night sky. Modern society, however, has traded in the old error for a new ignorance: We’ve corrected our science, but—partly because of city lights and other advanced technology—we’re ignorant of the night sky and rarely see it in all its glory.
And this is what brings me back to Phillip Shuford: Alongside being a great minister, he was a lifelong stargazer and even built his own Newtonian telescope to watch the night sky. (Read a previous Pathway story about this here.) He knew that, as Ps 19:1 declares, “The heavens declare the glory of God,” and he refused to let modern-day light pollution keep him from hearing this heavenly declaration. As the summer closes and the autumn months begin, I hope I can occasionally slip outdoors after dark to hear this declaration myself.
