Because it sure feels that way
The Problem
I’ve often felt frustrated when reading my Bible. I’ll flip through its delicate pages, hoping I’ll hear something from God. Because isn’t that what’s supposed to happen? I always hear stories about people who hear God talking to them as if they were Moses.
But I almost never hear anything other than the words on the page. There’s no special message for the day, and there is certainly no voice from heaven.
The Bible seems disturbingly like reading any other book — except it’s a little harder to understand than most, and it makes War and Peace look short. Not to mention it can get kind of boring.
Despite what those Moses types say, I don’t think I’m alone. Many Christians confess they have a hard time being consistent with reading Scripture. Indeed, many have never read significant portions of it. And so, frustration prevails. If we’re honest, it feels like our Bibles are broken.
The Cause
One of the causes of this problem is devotional literature. My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers is the classic example of this. It has one-page devotionals for each day of the year. In five minutes we can read a few sentences and receive a takeaway message. It’s a neat little package.
The problem is that this kind of literature has become so common that it has shaped how we think about the Bible. We sit down, read a chapter, and expect the Bible to work like My Utmost. Then we get disappointed because it doesn’t. We don’t get anything out of it. Secretly we feel let down; it seems the Bible hasn’t delivered. But we’re not allowed to actually say that, so we go about our day. Somehow, the next morning we find we’re a little too busy to read the next chapter in 2 Kings.
In our culture, it’s hard for us to imagine that time spent with no immediate payoff has been time well used. But instant gratification isn’t always the best way. The really good stuff in life takes considerable time and work before we see “results.”
The Solution
We need to read the Bible for what it is, not for what we want it to be. It’s not devotional literature. It’s not even a book. It’s a collection of many different books written by different people from different points in history in different styles who all have one thing in common: they reveal God’s character by telling the story of God’s interactions with His people, or they comment on that story.
Here are a couple of things I’ve found helpful to keep in mind when reading the Bible.
1. Be aware of the genre
Just like you aren’t reading this article in the same way you would read the lyrics to the latest Rihanna song, you can’t read the books of the Bible in the same way, either.
If a book seems like it’s recounting history, it probably is. And the author likely chose his beginning and ending points for a reason. Look for the story arc in the book.
Others are books of poetry, still others are letters.
And sometimes, we need to read books in conjunction with each other. Take for instance the Old Testament prophets, such as Ezekiel or Amos: relevant portions of Kings and Chronicles may be needed to get some context for each book.
It’s also important to remember that books, such as letters in the New Testament, are not written directly to us in our North American postmodern context. These letters are God’s word regarding someone else’s situation, and we learn by eavesdropping.
2. Avoid reading random sections.
That doesn’t work with other kinds of literature and it doesn’t work well with the Bible. Read a whole book of the Bible straight through like you would Harry Potter or a letter from your grandma.
Just like with a novel, you’ll understand the parts better if you understand how they fit into the bigger story.
The Goal
Since the Bible is all about revealing God’s character and helping us become like Him, the learning process is more like a relationship than devotional literature. After five years of marriage there are very few days when I can point to where I’ve learned something specific about my wife. But because I have spent time with her and have seen her in thousands of different situations, I understand her character pretty well. The cumulative build up of experience with her has allowed me to know her.
In the same way, when we read our Bibles, dwelling in the stories about God and how he acts in different situations, listening to the discussions about how to conform ourselves to God’s character, we slowly accumulate an understanding of who God is. This is the primary way our Bible reading transforms us. Of course there are days when we learn something specific about God, just like the day I learned that my wife is gluten intolerant. But this isn’t the norm. Instead, the norm is a slow, steady growth in understanding of and conformity to God’s character.
This takes more work and isn’t as quantifiable as what we get from devotional literature. But it does allow us to know God in a far more profound way.
To me, that’s worth a little delayed gratification.
Photo (Flickr CC) by Artondra Hall.
