All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. - 2 Timothy 3:16-17
It’s a strange picture really. Waking up before the sun is out, pouring a cup of your morning coffee and reading a 2,000+ year old historical religious document first thing in the morning.
Maybe you read some ancient poetry by the psalmist to start your day. Or perhaps you go to the four gospels, reading the varied accounts of the life of Jesus. Maybe you are diving deep into a letter written to a Christian church community where head coverings were required and there was a big issue with women worshipping the goddess of fertility.
I started a Bible in a year reading plan this year (safe to say I am a few months behind) and found it difficult to start my days reading about the different tribes of Israel or the annihilation of different people groups that went against Israel. It just felt weird.
It is funny, to be living in the age we are in, where technology is rapidly advancing but somehow, billions of us are still reading this very old book.
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. - Isaiah 40:8
I got really into reading my Bible in high school. I was really into doing art in my Bible for a bit there, and then I pivoted and began to love doing deep study on the different texts. My pages were covered in highlighter ink and detailed notes in the margins. This seeped into college, where I got a minor in Bible and this sacred text became my textbook. I am immensely grateful for the Christian contexts I have been raised in, through young adulthood, but I wonder how much they impacted the way I read the Bible.
I have always heard that the Bible was a story – the greatest story ever told! But the way that I have approached it for most of my life has been more like a non-fiction book than a fiction one. By no means do I intend to say that the Bible is fiction. But rather, that it is a story, and not simply a self-help book. It is not a bullet-point list of ways to improve your life (be more patient, loving, etc. by doing ______).
The Bible, like the best stories, is true. It tells the story of human failure, love, virtue, vice, redemption, glory, shame. It tells the story of communion and loss and fear and reunion and community.
But the way that we read the Bible is often more like an instruction booklet and less like a novel, a book containing a narrative arc, unreliable narrators, vicious characters, unbelievable events.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. -John 1:1
When I was a part of Christianity Today’s Young Storytellers Fellowship, Russell Moore chatted with us. He talked about a lot of things, but one thing that stuck with me was his comment about how often we are far too utilitarian with our Bible reading.
Moore spoke about the importance of reading a book like Job in a season where your life might feel abundant. Rather than reserving certain books for certain occasions, reading the whole Bible in hopes of it getting into you. He said that you might not need Job right now, but by reading it now, when you find yourself in a season where you will need it, you’ll have it stored up in you already.
Oftentimes, we ring this sacred story out like a rag, squeezing it for droplets of wisdom to apply to our lives right now. Reducing the Living Word to a sound-bite or an anecdote or an illustration to tuck away in your pocket.
It makes sense why we got here. In the age of the algorithm, where every piece of information we receive, down to the advertisements that flicker on the websites we visit, we are used to all of the information we intake being tailor-fit to us and our particular preferences.
We need to be aware of this tendency, so that we can correct it and begin reading the whole Bible for the sake of scripture, rather than simply breaking scripture down into an easy application for right now.
We should be reading the text to be formed by it, rather than forming the text around our lives and contexts. Don’t get me wrong, it is good to apply the wisdom of Proverbs and Psalms to our lives. But what does that mean for texts like Leviticus? Ones that we can not seamlessly integrate into our lives?
