The social standing of Bible Readers

I keep thinking about this very short memory that I have growing up, and now seeing how significant it is. 

I was from back when I was in high school during summer break. My family was in a housing transition that was taking forever long and we were living in this house that made us live on top of each other. My older sister was home for the summer, she just completed her sophomore year (I think) of college.

My sister had a tiny bedroom right off the living room with a loft bed. This distant memory of mine is having her laying on her bed reading her Bible with the door half open. I remember leaving my spot on the couch and going into her room and letting her she doesn't need to read the bible to impress us. We love and accept her for who she is. My sister didn't really react well, which makes sense. It was a really funny thing to say to someone. I didn't say it to her to be funny or to have an odd moment. I said it because it really bothered me that my sister felt the need to read the bible in front of me. 

You see I developed this belief in my upbringing that you only read the Bible to "one-up" a person spiritially. Like you only did it to impress others than to get into the word of God. So I felt like my sister felt threatened by me and needed to read God's word in front to remind me that I'm a fellow believer and to make things right or at least fair. 

I went and said what I said because I just wanted my sister to be real, and not fake with me. And I thought that reading your Bible in front of others was a really fake thing to do and I didn't want her to be that. Never thinking or occurred to me that she would read it to have her life changed. 

Sadly, I still have that a little in me. I don't like to read the bible in front of others typically, I feel like a "Christian show-off" and I think lots of christians feel that way when people do read read there Bible in front of them. 

In just this past year, I was working the late shift in the camp office and I was by myself reading the bible. A group of guys then  trickled into the office, and after ten minutes of their arrival, a church staff member of theirs asked me "we're you actually reading the Bible, or do you just keep that open on your desk so people think you do as a prop?" And said it in a way where it was judgy and having an open bible on my desk seemed like a cliché. 

I sometimes felt the need to move my Bible around the room so that people thought I read it more than I did-- in secret of course. 

Sometimes I become self-conscious about all my notes in my Bible, and they either think: 

A: that girl doesn't read it enough she barely has written anything on any pages

B: okay seriously, you don't need to underline every verse in james, I get it, you like it, stop rubbing it in our faces

Or 

C: that girl is dumb, she has the most obvious things written down in her margins, did she really need to note that? 

And I don't want people to see my Bible and conclude one of the above points about me. 

Summer camp and youth trips were different though, they scheduled you "time alone with God" and you were together as a group the whole time, so naturally you had to show people all this time you "normally" spent with God when they weren't around. Though, I think this "normal" time for people only happened on these trips, at least it seemed that way. 

Anyway, I say ALL of this to admit I have some messed-up views and background on the Bible and need to get over and let Gods word change my life and not get hunger up on all these random things.