A Protestant friend of mine and I are both looking for one of those “Bible in a year” books/programs. We’ve decided to do it together. While this is an excellent chance at evangelization, it is not an attempt by either of us to actively convert the other. We are both just looking for a good guide through Scripture. With that in mind, does anybody have any recommendations?
All the other posters seem to have opted to tell you that your idea is a bad one.
Would this protestant be open to a Catholic bible study? You could tell him that we have the same Bible (actually all Christian bibles originated with the Catholic Church) except a few “bonus” books. Actually I’ve shared some of Wisdom and Sirach with a Protestant, who liked them.
If the friend wants to stay “non-denominational,” then I’d personally rather go there and do it with him rather than miss out on a good fellowship opportunity. Nothing says you can’t study Catholic points of view on your own, or discuss on CAF.
Of course the other posters have also asserted that these programs are not really non-denominational. Fair enough. I have an idea. Go to
BibleGateway.com and for me, I like the new testament. Pick a book, and you can even listen to the machine read the scripture. I like listening to the machine because it does add expression like a human reader would, but lets the words hit us unbiased. I use the default version “NIV” because it has the most resources, like the audio readings of it. Some may protest it’s not Catholic so don’t do it. But I say it’s pretty close – unless they know of a Catholic resource we don’t know about. So far the only Catholic resource we have is one that tells you what you shouldn’t do.
I even like to play scripture audio when I’m not necessarily paying attention to it, because then the Words can sneak in past my “attention sentries” and affect me at deeper levels than just the literal.
Alan
