Psalm 119:1-4 People of the Book

Blessed are those whose ways are blameless,
  who walk according to the law of the Lord.
Blessed are those who keep his statutes
  and seek him with all their heart—
they do no wrong
  but follow his ways.
You have laid down precepts
  that are to be fully obeyed.

Psalm 119:1-4

The church I grew up in was part of the Restoration Movement, a non-hierarchical “non-denominational” collection of churches devoted to restoring the church to the way it was in the first century church, along with its first century doctrines and practices. This emphasis grew out of and nurtured an exalted view of the authority and importance of the scriptures.

I learned to love the Bible in that church the same way a fish learns to love the water. The preaching, the teaching, the Sunday School lessons, even the VBS crafts were all aimed at one thing: to totally immerse us in the scriptures.

I learned to view the Bible as as the handbook containing the “pattern set forth”. It was described as the user’s manual for the Christian and for the Church.

“Where the Bible speaks, we speak; Where the Bible is silent, we are silent” was the oft repeated motto of our non-denominational denomination.

The children of the church were taught sound doctrine, as defined by the church. We learned to swear allegiance to sound doctrine – the doctrine as taught by our group, that is. It was always clear that our church was in sole possession of that true truth. The doctrine of other denominations was suspect. Actually, it was more than suspect. It was flat out wrong.

I remember hearing from the pulpit that the only way people could possibly speak in tongues was through the occult.

Failure to partake of the Lord’s Supper each and every week – and only on Sundays - would make you guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.

The most renowned evangelist in the world, Billy Graham, was not considered a hero of the faith in our church. He was guilty of misleading thousands of people to believe they could be saved just by reciting a non-biblical “sinner’s prayer”, whether or not they were ever baptized by immersion.

If the Truth was a place, we were already there. Our task was to bring other people to the same place.

I grew up with the sure knowledge that I was blessed to have been born into a family that went to the right church and knew the right things.

Sometime during those years I discovered Psalm 119 and fell in love with it. First of all, it’s the longest chapter in the Bible, which made me feel like it must be one of the most important. Also, the 119th starts off talking about the people of the Bible, which made me feel quite satisfied with myself. I had no trouble equating my knowledge of the Bible with the phrases expressed by David.

TR’s personal paraphrase of the first few verses would have looked something like this:

1 Blessed are they whose interpretations are blameless, who teach according to the law of the Lord.
2 Blessed are they who respect his statutes and study them with all their heart.
3 They misinterpret nothing wrongly; they talk in his ways.
4 You have laid down precepts that are to be fully digested. 

Blessed. That is what we were. Our understanding of the Way was blameless.

How wrong I was.