The Book That Understands Me - Episode 1

The Bible, as the living and active word of God, is a supernatural book. When it is faithfully believed, preached, taught, read, and studied, the God whose word it is will be at work supernaturally changing lives. In my preparation for leading our upcoming TruthWalk class on why we believe the Bible, I came across a true story about the Bible's power to change lives that literally moved me to tears as I read it. It is the story of Emile Cailliet. I share it with you in two episodes -------- here is part one:

When we begin to read the Bible and are spoken to by the Holy Spirit as we read it, several things happen. First, the reading affects us as no other reading does.

Dr. Emile Calliet was a French philosopher who eventually settled in America and became a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey. He had been brought up with a naturalistic education. He had never shown the slightest interest in spiritual things. He had never seen a Bible. But World War 1 came, and as he sat in the trenches he found himself reflecting on the inadequacy of his world-and-life view. He asked himself the same questions Levin had asked in Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, while sitting beside the bed of his dying brother: Where did life come from? What did it all mean, if anything? What value are scientific laws or theories in the face of reality? Calliet later wrote, "Like Levin, I too felt, not with my reason but with my whole being, that I was destined to perish miserably when the hour came."

During the long night watches Calliet began to long for what he came to call "a book that would understand me." He was highly educated, but he knew of no such book. Thus, when he was later wounded and released from the army and returned to his studies, he determined that he would prepare such a book secretly for his own use. As he read for his courses, he would file away passages that seemed to speak to his condition. Afterward, he would copy them over in a leather-bound book. He hoped that the quotations, which he carefully indexed and numbered, would lead him from fear and anguish to release and jubilation.

At last the day came when he had put the finishing touches to his book, "the book that would understand me." He went out and sat down under a tree and opened the anthology. He began to read, but instead of release and jubilation, a growing disappointment began to come over him as he recognized that instead of speaking to his condition, the various passages only reminded him of their context and of his own work in searching them out and recording them. Then he knew that the whole undertaking simply would not work, for the book was a book of his own making. It carried no strength of persuasion. Dejected, he returned it to his pocket (Foundations of the Christian Faith, James Montgomery Boice, Inter Varsity Press, 1986, pg.50).

Happily there is more to the story, but here is where I will leave it until next week's post. I am sorry, but to learn of the outcome you will just have to be a bit patient! And as I think about it, it seems appropriate in a way to leave things here. It may help us feel something of the emptiness and despair that Emile Cailliet experienced, and that we ought to feel if we are left only with man's word. Thankfully, we are not left only with man's word.