I can hear the answer now: Same way I read any book, one
word after another.
I just re-read C. S. Lewis’s An Experiment in Criticism
and it got me thinking about how we read our Bibles. He makes a distinction
between reading for use and reading to receive. Since he is dealing with
literature, he’s really making the distinction between reading literature for
the sake of the literature (reading to receive) and reading for some other
purpose, such as learning truths about life, or learning a worldview (reading
for use).
In some sense the Bible is literature. But I fear that most
Christians never read it as such. They read it for use, to use Lewis’s
category. They read it in bits and pieces. They read selected verses that they’ve
drawn together with the help of a concordance so that they can do word studies,
or investigate particular doctrines. That’s not necessarily bad. It is an
application of Paul’s statement about “all Scripture” in 2 Tim 3:16ff. But the
end result of such an approach can be that the Bible is never really seen as
anything more than a mine of doctrinal or practical nuggets: verses that can be
committed to memory for some memory plan, or pulled out in case of need, like
the lists of recommended verses for different counseling situations.
That may be part of the explanation for why many sermons on
the psalms seem to completely miss the psalm itself. The preacher has, instead
of seeing it as a literary whole, seen it as a series of doctrinal assertions.
It may also explain why many Christians have a hard time reading the Bible.
They’ve been taught that they need to read it for use. But as they begin to
read it, they realize that the only parts they understand are the handful of
verses they’ve memorized. Even the Sunday school stories they learned are a lot
more complicated than they remember them to be: there’s a lot more to Noah than
a big boat, or to David than the battle with Goliath. And don’t even mention
the prophets.
Another part of the difficulty is that the Bible isn’t
written at a fifth-grade level. Yet folks seem to think that they ought to be
able to understand it the first time through. I’ve been reading it regularly
for over forty years and there are parts that only now I think I am beginning to
get a real handle on.
So try this the next time you read the Bible. First, lower
your expectations. There’s a lot you’re not going to understand. There’s even a
lot you’re not going to like. Second, get a Bible without the chapter and verse
divisions. When was the last time you read a piece of literature that had
page-long chapters subdivided into verses? Then just read it. Read it for its
own sake. Read it receptively. Read it the way you would listen to a friend
tell you a story. You listen because you want to hear, not because you think
what he says is going to change your life, or teach you something you didn’t know
before. The Bible will do that, because it’s God’s word. But if you read it
just because you think you must, you’re missing out on the joy of it.
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