A little girl, being asked by a priest to attend religious instruction, refused, saying it was against her father’s wishes. The priest said she should obey him, not her father. “Oh! Sir! We are taught in the Bible to “Honor thy father and thy mother,” she replied.

“But you are to call me father,” was his answer, to which she replied, “No, for the scriptures say, ‘Call no man your father upon the earth for one is your father, which is in heaven.”

The priest was not anxious to lose a religious discussion to one so young, and he said, “You have no business reading the Bible.”

Then why did Jesus tell me to “Search the Scriptures?” she asked? He replied by saying, “But that is only for the clergy. You understand that a child cannot know the Scriptures.”

“Then why,” she asked, “did Paul write to Timothy, ‘from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures’?”

Surely there was some way to get the best of this young upstart. So the priest said, “Timothy was being trained to be a bishop and he was taught by the church authorities.”

“No sir,” said the little girl, “He was taught by his mother and grandmother. At least that is what Paul wrote.”

The priest turned away and someone said they heard him mumbling something about, “She knew enough Bible to poison a whole parish.”

(Big Clifty Church Bulletin, Vol. 32 No. 33 – Aug. 16, 2009)

It is my hope that we too know too much Bible to be led astray.