I read my Bible faithfully. Or at least I would like to think I do. Often, life gets in the way. For many years my house was a busy place, kids, dogs, activity – finding a time and place for quiet became a challenge. Eventually, life started to get in the way of faithful reading. Too many commitments, not enough time in the day.
Does this sound familiar? What happened here? Usually this happens because we have lost sight of what the Bible is to us. This is so common amongst Christians, it’s a story heard over and over and familiar to most of us that are not actual students of the Bible.
The reality is that we probably are reading it wrong, therefore we don’t understand it, and we can’t figure out how to apply it. We go to church on Sunday and hear the preacher tell us things within scripture, but when we try it ourselves, we can’t seem to find the relevance. Ultimately, we begin to lose interest and begin to lose our trust that the Bible is relevant. This is the start down a path of feeling distant from God. What can be done though?
When the Bible Starts to Feel Out of Reach
It begins with gaining a better understanding of the Bible. How it is written, how it is not written, its history and so forth. Often, we get caught up in a church experience, enjoying the people, the service, the music – whatever it is that causes us to want to be a Christian. We sign up for it without really understanding what we are signing up for. Most certainly the church and fellow Christians make it sound easy and inviting. But, left on our own we stumble easily, we have no foundation.
Let’s take a look at the common experiences. We are told to read our Bibles daily. We are even given reading plans to help us “read it through in a year.” So, we start off on page 1 with a goal of getting to the last page by December 31. Once this goal is completed, what’s next? We are told to keep reading it, so we do. Why then do I still feel lost and so far away from God?
The Problem Isn’t the Bible — It’s Our Approach
We must start to realize the problem is actually us. We approach scripture as a task and approach our Bible like a textbook. What’s worse is that we start by making the Bible an idol. We make it out to be something so holy and mighty that we subconsciously make it into something we won’t be able to understand, when it’s really a bound book of pages assembled for our convenience, but we elevate it to something unapproachable.
Do we serve a God that enjoys confusion? Did He write the Bible so that He could have a bunch of ‘gotcha’ opportunities? Are we being set up for failure? Is this the kind of God that we serve? This is why context is a critical part of this picture. If this is how we think of God, we are already in trouble. But this is not the God of our understanding. Why then do we think the Bible is any different?
God does not need a Bible to tell Him how to be God. He gave it to us for us and it’s about us. The Bible is filled with examples of human behaviors and how God interacts with them. If we approach the Bible as a textbook, a history book as it were, we will miss the message He has for us. After all, why should you care about something that happened to somebody you don’t know thousands of years ago? The better question, when we approach it properly would be, “why did God think it was important to capture this event thousands of years ago for me to read today?”
Reading It the Way It Was Written
Once we move from how we were taught in school to study into the world of how the Bible was actually written, a whole new world opens up for us. That new world is the relationship with God. Once we see the message He has for us then we can draw close to Him. In the meantime, we are outsiders looking in at God’s relationship with other people. The main story of the Bible is about reconciliation. Reconciled to what? When we read Genesis we see that God walked in the cool of the morning with Adam and Eve, they were friends, they hung out together – this is what God wants to restore.
The Bible indeed records historical events, and those events are true. But it was not written as a history book, if it were we would have been given a much more complete picture. It’s not a textbook either so it should not be approached as one. If we consider it more like a true story novel we begin to open up new understandings. Consider how movies are made. First, you are introduced to the characters, you are taken through events in their lives that provide the foundation for how it relates to the story being told. You are led to love the characters and hate the villains and eventually you are drawn into the movie. It touches your thinking, your emotions, you even find yourself trying to figure out where the story leads and how it might end. So, we know how to do it.
The Bible was written in Eastern style writing. We have been taught in Western style. Western style is usually a chronological information dump. You are given fact upon fact as they occurred, and you are left to figure out when and how to use this information. Whereas Eastern style writing is more like the movie example. It is experiential, written so as to draw you into the story and experience the wisdom and the lessons it has for you. Approaching your Bible study this way opens up an incredible book filled with events and stories that seem unbelievable, yet you know it’s a true story!
Other points to consider are that Eastern style is circular not timeline based. When we read the Bible as a chronological story we get lost quickly, because it is not in chronological order. In fact, there is no beginning and no end when you consider the entire Bible. God does not live with the restrictions of time; time is created by and for man. God has no beginning and no end and neither does His story. This is why the Bible reading plans become a problem. They are great to get us started and in the habit of reading, but we should not stay there. We need to be captured by the stories and what they mean to us. The reading of Scripture is not a task or a duty of the Christian – it’s a privilege and the place where God speaks to us. We need to learn how to enjoy reading it.
A Living Book for Every Season of Life
We tend to favor reading the passages we have heard before and skip over the ones that are confusing or boring. We love to arrive at a passage that we remember from Sunday School or a sermon because we can tell ourselves “I know what this story is about” but then we move on. The problem here is that the Bible is alive. If it’s alive, then it is telling us fresh things not the same old story from long ago. When we learn to set aside our preconceived notions of what we read, then it can speak to us. When it speaks to us, it speaks to us where we are in life. This is why so many people have the experience of coming across a passage they never read before, despite having read the Bible numerous times! While you would swear that passage was never there, it was there all along. What happened is not that the Bible has changed, you have changed. This passage is speaking to you because it is now relevant to you and you are better able to understand it.
Ultimately, the Bible is a letter to us from God. One that is intended to be understood as well as applicable throughout our entire life. The wisdom contained in its passages will serve us in every situation we find ourselves in and will always speak to us when we are willing to listen. It is truly the most amazing book ever written, it is truly the Book of Us.