What If There Were No Bibles?

This past weekend I watched the movie, “The Book of Eli” starring Denzel Washington. The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic 2043 where Washington’s character, Eli, is coming to the end of a 30 year journey. In his possession is the last remaining copy of the King James Version of the Holy Bible.

While watching the movie, I picked up on many themes—faith, perseverance, and illiteracy. But the most striking was the idea of scarcity and how it drives our behaviors. Throughout the movie, we see how scarcity creates fear and further divides the haves from the have-nots. In one powerful scene, Eli shares that before the War people had more than they needed and threw away things that others kill for today (such as shampoo, batteries, wet naps, water, and even the Bible). Are things more valuable to us when we can’t have them? What if we were faced with living in a world where there were no Bibles? Would that affect our desire to be in possession of it? Read it? Study it? Learn it?

Fortunately, in our current reality we have free and unrestricted access to the Bible. Let’s not wait until we are faced with the possibility of losing it before we start to treasure the message of God’s love, grace, and salvation.