Another Stunning Achievement of Evangelical Narcissism
November 20, 2009
"By which He has granted to John His precious and exceedingly great promises; that through these John may become a partaker of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world by lust." (2 Pet. 1:4)
Have you ever inserted your name as you read the Bible to make it more personal? Now you can experience the reality of God's love and promises in a way you never thought possible. In the Personal Promise Bible, you will read your first name personalized in over 5,000 places throughout the New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs, over 7,000 places throughout the complete Old and New Testaments.
As if there were not enough versions of the Bible already, now we can have our own personalized Bible. The Personal Promise Bible is another stunning achievement of evangelical narcissism.
But the Personal Promise Bible makes perfect sense if you have payed any attention to the trajectory of American evangelicalism. Quite simply, it's all about me. "What's all about me," you ask? Well, everything. As the publishers of the P.P.B. indicate, "You will read your first name personalized in over 5,000 places throughout the New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs, over 7,000 places throughout the complete Old and New Testaments." In other words, "If you thought Jesus was a big deal in the Bible wait until you see your own name mentioned exponentially more times than even that of our Lord."
This vaudevillian move is not so strange when considering how the many promises in Scripture are routinely ripped from their context and made to be my own little private arrangement with God. For instance, how many times are God's promises to national Israel under the Old Covenant concerning their prospering in the Land of Promise used by contemporary Christians to assure themselves that God wants them to have a bigger swimming pool, a better job, and successful children? How many times are God's promises to the Church personalized in such a way that they lose their true meaning? It seems that within contemporary evangelicalism a morbid preoccupation with self is not only no longer a sin but a virtue.
