Free at last

I finished my book. I told someone today I had taken 3 months to read it. My memory is failing me. I looked back through my blogs and found I had started reading it in August 2008. In my own defense, I took a couple of breaks from the book to read two other books. But it was a difficult read and took me substantial time to work my way through it.

The book appears to have been written on a masters level, although I believe the author hoped men and women of all levels would derive good from it. Not having the vocabulary of theology, especially the vocabulary of biblical scholarship, I found myself looking up words and then sorting out exactly how they applied in the reading.

In the end, I went through 28 pages of aha moments. In fact, I am in the process of rereading that section, titled "After Such Knowledge..." I am highlighting as I go, using a different color for words I didn't know before reading this book.

I wrote in a letter to a dear aunt of mine that I wasn't sure if I had finally arrived at truth, or just arrived at someone who thinks like me. In actuality, it is I who thinks like him. But I did not have the intellect or the exposure his life time of research has brought to him. Now I have at least enough insight into what he believes is truth to see that it resonates with what I had believed since a very young person.

The consequence of which is a freeing of spirit in me and an immense satisfaction that I finally understand the Bible and am free of the restrictive heavy hand of the Christian community in which I was raised.

And I can truly echo Martin Luther King Jr's words as he quote that old negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."