Don’t Read Your Bible!
Don’t leave yet! I promise I’m going somewhere with that strange declaration.
As the calendar rolls to a new year, it is common for churches to encourage members to read their Bibles every day. Christians rush to the bookshelf, take down their Bibles, and cough, cough…knock the dust off. They excitedly fly through Genesis with all the cool snakes, murders, and deception. They continue diligently through the first part of Exodus with plagues and seas parting and golden calves and manna. The excitement starts to wane a little in the back half of the book – it’s getting a little confusing, and if we’re honest a little boring. And then Leviticus. Leviticus is the reason many Bibles have gathered dust on them each January.
I used to be among the encouragers. Read your Bible! And then I met Jane. Jane’s not her real name. I’m not even sure I remember her real name. Her daughter was friends with my daughter, so Jane started spending time with my wife as our daughters played together. She had recently joined a church in my area but indicated she had questions about the Bible. My wife agreed to sit with her and try to answer her questions. Our experience with Jane makes me question whether “read your Bible” is the best advice.
You see, Jane didn’t own a Bible. And this was before you could just download a Bible to your phone. She had completed a new member course at a church, and nobody had bothered to ask her if she had a Bible. She had never owned a Bible. She didn’t know what an Old Testament or a New Testament was. She couldn’t have told you that Peter, Paul, and Mary were not just a ‘60s folk group. She didn’t need to read the Bible. She needed to know what a Bible was.
Could it have been worse? What if her friendly Jehovah’s Witness neighbor had given her a copy of the New World Translation and her new pastor told her to read her Bible – John is a good place to start. So, she picks up her Bible and starts with John 1:1, which the New World Translation translates as “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god”. She’s not two sentences into her pastor’s instructions, and she has encountered damnable heresy from her “bible”. You see, Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe Jesus is God – they believe He is “a god”. And even if she had a trusty English Standard Version with the right translation – the Word was God, the concepts of the Trinity in that verse may be over a new believer’s head – what she really needs is to be taught about John 1:1 – not to read John 1:1.
So, the exhortation “Don’t read your Bible” is not some magisterial effort to limit access to God’s Word to a select few. On the contrary, it is a reminder that before believers can read the Bible well, they need to be taught what the Bible is, what is true about it, the context and setting in which it was written, how to interpret it, and what message it is communicating. So don’t just read your Bible…
Know Your Bible
If a friend said to you “I just finished a great book I think you should read,” you might respond with questions like: what’s the name of the book? Who wrote it? What’s it about? In what culture or setting do the events take place? If you’re the kid from The Princess Bride, you might ask “Is this a kissing book?” Ewww!
I’ve got a great book you should know. But this is no ordinary book. It’s the most important book ever written, and it contains the words of life! And these next five chapters will answer your questions about that book. The names of the books that make up The Book. Who wrote it. What it’s about. The culture and setting in which the book takes place. How to understand places in the book that can be confusing to readers. And most importantly, the truth about the book. Sound interested? Then, let’s explore this book we call “God’s Word.”