How Do You View the Bible?

Here's a simple parable with an important moral.

Each mirror, you see, has inspectors,
who, acting as corporate protectors,
must find any scratch, every unseemly patch.
They’re inferior mirror detectors.

The head of this group is Pierre,
who trains his formidable stare
on each glass for an hour, and does he turn sour
when finding some blemishes there!

This man, so well-trained as a peerer,
has no practical use for a mirror.
His hair’s such a tangle, seen from any angle.
We wish that his mirror were clearer.

“Pierre,” I repeatedly mention,
“Your hair’s now a bone of contention.
Now, sir, you just hush! I have bought you a brush,
and some spray for your hairdo’s retention.”

Do you think that such mild conversation
will effect any quick transformation?
Not until he observes what is fraying our nerves:
his nightmare-hair irritation.

Now we know there is many a preacher,
or a prideful, and self-proclaimed teacher,
who examines God’s mirror, and cries, “Could be clearer!”
but never sees what kind of creature
the mirror to them has reflected.
They must face what they never expected:
if the glass is looked through, then so clear is the view,
that the critics themselves are inspected.

As James, the brother of Jesus writes, "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it–he will be blessed in what he does." --James 1:22–25 NIV