Mark Your Bible
Some humans highlight passages in their Bible with either a colored pencil or highlight marker. The purposes of this is to either remind or make more noticeable certain scriptures. Other humans go as far as writing notes on the margins. The question here is this a desecration of your Bible? Can it go too far? How far is too far? Is it okay to use stickers?
The Bible is a book. An object. What is important is the information that it contains, not the physical object itself. Anything that we do to help ourselves get the information out of it is, in my opinion, desirable.
So, marking it up, making notes in the margins, using stickers, or anything else is perfectly acceptable. If someone is so foolish as to want to stomp on it, or otherwise "desecrate" it, that is their problem, not mine.
The bible specifically talks, quite a bit, about not worshiping idols, or the works of our hands. If we think that we can "desecrate" a book made by the hands of men, then we are giving a sort of value to the physical object that it doesn't warrant. We are beginning to worship the object rather than the Being that the object teaches us about.
As long as you are doing it for the purpose of study, I do not see anything wrong with it, as a matter of fact, it is helpful in a lot of instances when someone ask you a question and you can quickly go over your marked scriptures and even read a comment you may have written on it. It makes things much easier.
When I left home, my dad gave me his Bible. It is littered with notes and about three different colored highlighters. I think that it helped him separate not only what he wanted to remember most, but specific topics. I don't think that something made by man can be desecrated. Vandalized yes, but not desecrated. The bible is nothing but a book of pages. its whats on them thats important, or rather, the ideas written on them. The physical book itself is of no real value, because the book means nothing if one can't read, but the spoken words and ideas still retain influence.
Most people only highlight their Bible for learning purpose, which can if done properly be a good thing.
It makes it easier to find a specific chapter or verse, quickly when you need to find reference to it.
If however, a person is drawing or writing in their Bible to vandalize it, then it can never be classed as a good thing in my opinion.
It's a great tool to highlight passages that cover specific topics, and write in the margins other related scriptures, etc.
I have once seen this process taken a bit too far ~ A sweet lady had a very old looking bible with her at church one day. It looked to me as if every verse was highlighted in a different color. There weren't any unmarked passages in the entire book. I didn't get a chance to ask her why.
My Bible has a lot of notes in it. I am a sticky-note person. The small, narrow ones that are post-it kinds. I have a tendency to write a passage number on that and then underline the portion I am really interested in, but I only do in pencil, because the highlighting bothers me a bit. Not because I think it's in violation of the book, but because it distracts me when I am reading! :laughs: I am the same with text books for school! My BOM looks like a party favour, though. It has little multicoloured flags sticking out all over the place!