The technology of the book remains, even in our denuded and denatured era, the best tool for smuggling ideas across time.

In oral cultures, narratives- while powerful- begin to shift and change within the span of a lifetime, as stories move from mouth to ear and then across time. They transform into myths and legends faster than they can be remembered as such.

In a culture of the book, ideas of all kinds remain powerful even after their original progenitors have long since passed into the grave. Which means, of course, they can be argued with, expropriated, repudiated, and resurrected. Which leads to the idea–not a natural one by any stretch of the imagination–that ideas are fungible and impermanent.

The most successful book in the history of the world, that began with an oral narrative written down by one man and continued through multiple authors gamboling across time and space, continues to be the Bible. A book consisting of other books–a library, if you will–containing, in between its covers, almost every idea about the composition and meaning of reality itself.

And I’m not talking in narrow terms as defined by naturalism, scientific materialism, postmodern skepticism, or even ever-expanding existential dread. That’s all in the pages of that book as well. If you have the discernment to see it.

Any culture that has the Book of Books as its foundation can stumble for sure, waver most definitely, and crumble at the edges moving toward the center for sure, but the culture that builds on the cornerstone of the ideas smuggled across time in that Book of Books will not fall.

And the gates of Hell–whether that be a spiritually made, psychologically made, or materially made Hell–will not prevail against it.

Bet on the Bible, and the ideas inherent in it, and you’ll never fail.