I have never had to do this but I suspect at some point I will, if a bible gets so beaten up over time how do you dispose of it properly?
I can’t see just tossing it in a trash can because even the United States flag has a rigid procedure regarding disposal. Which we learned about in class BTW.
So how would someone respectfully dispose of a book containing God’s word. I go to a christian high school and not even my bible teacher has given me an answer that satisfies me.
He said that you just pass the bible on to another person but if it is in really bad shape that doesn’t make sense to me. This is not a post dissing anyone who is an athiest but keep in mind that I believe that the Bible is sacred and nobody will convince me otherwise so if anyone has any insight holla back.
I was thinking someone should start a recycling thing strictly for old Bibles to turn them into new ones I’d go along with that.
The Word of God may be inspired and sacred, but the paper it’s written on is just that; paper. I’m not aware that any Christian denomination has rules for how you dispose of it. That would be to confuse the Word of God with the words on the page.
Some Christian traditions - notably Catholicism and Orthodoxy - recognise that physical objects or substances can be imbued with sacredness and prescribe rules for how to deal with them but, so far as I know, bibles are never among those objects.
Some quick Googling indicates that in Jewish tradition a worn-out Torah scroll is buried. You could also consider burning a worn-out Bible. Either of those–especially burning–might be misinterpreted as indicating disrespect (you’d probably want to do this in private), but as you presumably know burning or burial are the preferred methods of disposing of worn-out flags. Symbolically the object is being treated as if it were a body; when people die, we bury or cremate them rather than just putting them in a plastic bag out on the curb.
As the previous poster indicates, theologically speaking getting too worked up about this might be seen be some as smacking of idolatry.
I believe the Bible is sacred, but I also believe paper is paper. While I have no problem with recycling the paper if you’re in an affluent society and there are dozens and dozens of Bibles available at every bookstore, your pause for thought is very appropriate! In Ceausescu’s Romania there were times when local pastors would have maybe a few pages of Bible to themselves. They’d preach secretly from it for ages, until they were able to arrange a secret meeting with another pastor, when they’d swap fragments. To them the idea of doing anything so casual as throwing the book away might well be appalling: even once better times come, one can imagine that a treasured scrap of scripture would remain a potent personal belonging.
So I think you’re right to wonder about this. An awful lot of people have died to get hold of copies of this book (I do not deny that plenty of people have been killed in the book’s name, too, but that’s a different argument). Think about it a bit, then: is your Bible really in that poor a condition? Could it go somewhere useful? My wife used to give old Bibles to guys in the street along with money. She had previously used tracts, but she figured the Bible was better even if it was a knackered old copy.
I once got all uppity with her about this. Even if she did pray about who to give them to, didn’t she think they were more interested in food than in reading? Didn’t she think it was a bit insulting to just hand someone a Bible? Wasn’t she presenting an image of a trite, idiotic Christianity?
She just told me some of the stories about growing up in a missionary family, about the pastors she’d known who hadn’t survived, and about the world outside the west’s comfortable bubble. I felt like a total prick. The people she was giving the Bibles to were pretty much outside that bubble too. And an awful lot more of them were looking pleased and smiling than the folk I half-heartedly witnessed to at work.
So, I dunno. Carry it around till someone looks like they could use it? There are so many televangelists apparently desperate for cash, cash, cash to ship new Bibles out to far-off lands - surely someone somewhere is doing it a more sensible way with old ones? Course they’d need to be in the native language but I daresay an English one would be better than nothing at a push.
You’ve given me a lot to think about. I think I’ll go and see if there’s some kind of organisation already running.
My Dad’s a minister, and once we burned a bunch of bibles in a bonfire. My Mom had cleaned out the church’s library, and she pulled out all the old duds of books to dispose of. As a family of pyromaniacs, our traditional way of getting rid of large amounts of trash is to burn it at the fire pit on the family farm. I asked my dad if he expected a bolt of lightning to come from the blue sky and strike us down, and he made the analogy to US flags and the american legion. He didn’t seem to think much of burning them, so I wouldn’t think you should.
Break (tear) up into unrecognizable bits and throw in the trash.
The reason for these guidelines is not because God will be angry for disrepecting a blessed item which is no longer useful, but to avoid the scandal of seeing a recognizably holy item (cross, bible, etc…) lying atop a trash heap.
I agree with Ross, give it to a homeless person that wants it. They don’t care what shape it’s in, it gives them something to read, and they might find enlightenment from it. How, and if, they dispose of it is out of your hands, I did say a person that wants it though. That’s what I’d do at least.
I don’t believe in God, but I assume that anything you do would be acceptable if it’s done in a context of respect. For example, burning it by soaking it in gasoline and then laughing and dancing around the flame would probably be considered totally different from burning it, and thinking about what it’s meant to, and how it’s changed your life, as you watch it burn.
Burning a U.S. flag can be considered respectful or intentionally disrespectful, depending on the circumstances. I assume burning a Bible (or burying it, or whatever) would be the same.
