The Inexplicable Need to Study the Bible

I don't even know where to start because there have been so many things on my mind lately: family-wise, relationship-wise, and book-wise. I listed those in order of heaviness, starting with least heavy to most heavy. So first and foremost comes my book, and what comes with it. And right now, with it comes an inexplicable need to study the bible.

So I got in a discussion with an unnamed person the other day. This unnamed person told me that she doesn't vote or follow politics because it is part of her philosophy that goes back to when she was a kid, and her parents raised her on Jesus' teachings, one of them being "be no part of the world." So apparently, they interpreted this to mean be no part of politics and stay completely out of all of those matters. Now I'm no expert on Jesus' message but I have a fair amount of knowledge on the subject, and I was pretty sure that Jesus wouldn't say that. So I got out my handy-dandy bible and told her to show me where he said that. She couldn't find it, and ended up looking it up online. The passage was in John, and she gave me the line number so I could read it, and it said something like "they are not part of the world, as I am not part of this world." Looking at this line in context, I told her that what Jesus was probably trying to say was that he is not a part of this world because he is God. This unnamed person looked at it, and agreed that that was probably what Jesus meant after all. So that settled that.

But anyway, the feeling that I needed to study the bible actually started before that, and it came out of nowhere. So right now I have a New International Version, which is an easy to understand translation. I've decided that I will read and re-read and re-read it, focusing on the New Testament, mainly the four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Then I will get as many other translations as I can find, and read them, focusing on those same four books, comparing and contrasting differences, until I know what Jesus said backwards and forwards. This is what I will do.

At least, this is what I think I might do, between working on getting published, doing classwork, maintaining a social life, watching the O'Reilly factor (if I get cable), and whatever other obligations I might have.