As I have been working on my doctoral dissertation on the role of the Bible in American culture, I have thought about the impact the Bible has had in my life.

I liked hearing about it, but didn’t much like reading it. I wanted to like reading it, because reading it made me good. The Bible was big, full, dark, light, and I had many copies.

The copy on our kitchen table was there every morning; it was Mom’s, and it was good. “Let me read my Bible, Hon’,” she’d say when I woke up too early, wanting breakfast. I let her, and it was good. I loved seeing her read the Bible because she bowed her head over it and prayed in a whisper; the angels came into our home, swirled around her, and protected us from the principalities and powers of this present darkness.

If she didn’t pray, she wouldn’t bring the world into being; our lives would unfold; the angels sitting guard on top of our home would go away, unwanted. The guardian in my room might depart if she didn’t pray and keep him in place. We kept him in place with prayer, him and his friends who made up a whole hedge—“a hedge of angels to guard him, Lord,” Mom prayed—like the thick green thistly bushes lining our house.

The Bible was a sword. It said so—the sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. The Word you hold in your hands is a weapon. I would wake up each morning and put on all the armor of God. Mom and I would go through the motions, miming the helmet of salvation into place over our heads, the belt of truth around our waists, the breastplate of righteousness upon our chests. We’d shod our feet with the shoes of the gospel of peace, then sheath our swords of the Spirit, the Word of God.

My mom shod me in God’s armor so I could withstand Satan’s fiery darts. I loved being shod with God’s armor each morning. If—after a shower, getting dressed, making the bed and having breakfast—Mom told me to put on my coat and head to school without remembering to shod me, I’d complain, “Mom, we need to put on our armor!”

“Oh, Son, you’re so right!” she’d exclaim and mime with me so the fiery darts of Satan could not stand.

I saw her praying over her own Sword each morning, and often again after supper when she’d kneel at her bedside and whisper serious, straight, serene. My dad sometimes would join her, and they’d fold their hands, knees on the floor, elbows on the mattress, faces planted in the bedclothes or heads hanging back, faces up. Lying near the bed’s edge or open on the floor were bulky, bound masses of paper—two leather-bound Bibles spilling with church bulletins, bookmark ribbons, and whatever scraps of paper served as notes for that week’s sermon.

My childhood home was founded on the Bible. It was there in the beginning, and the world was made through it. In the beginning was the Bible, and the Bible was God.