Reading the Bible is hard

but it's easier with each other

Reading the Bible is hard. That’s not a secret; we just don’t say it out loud as often as we should.

All my life growing up in church, I knew I was supposed to read my Bible. That’s how twelve-year-old me found herself fumbling through Ezekiel in the KJV. I don’t regret it, but I would have been much better off if someone had helped me out with how to read the Bible. I thought some wild stuff for a long time while.

I started Bible Project’s class Intro to the Hebrew Bible a few weeks ago and Tim Mackie said that he knew quite a few people that finally decided to read the Old Testament and that led to them walking away from the faith. That makes me sad, but it also makes sense. The Bible, but especially the Old Testament, is hard to read. It’s hard to understand. We toss it at people as if it is simple and we walk away unconcerned. We should not.

My goal is to be a simple scholar¹ and a curator. I want to do some of the legwork for you, for others. Here’s a list of resources. Here’s a great video, a book to read, a podcast series to consider. Here’s a listening ear when you’re freaking out and you’re scared to tell anyone. I want to hold the hands of the scholars and theologians on one side and the hands of people interested in Jesus who are teachers/plumbers/parents/professionals in the other. I’m no longer embarrassed that all of that *waves hands* sounds like a lot of work. If you want to read the Bible in a non-reductive way, it’s going to take work. If you’re going to teach the Bible, it will be even more work. If we are going to follow Jesus in a way that is genuinely compelling to people who do not know Him, it’s going to take some work.²

This semester, I guest lectured for a coworker’s college class. I was talking to a friend about it later and told him it was a spiritual foundations class. He wanted to know if I really thought that was necessary. Fair point. We live in a town of hundreds of churches. Most of those students probably grew up in church. I still think the class is necessary. Wanna know why? Because most of us were taught to go to church and not do drugs or have sex outside marriage and we think that’s what following Jesus is. Friends, it is not. We need more than that. Even reading the Bible alone is not enough. John Mark Comer recently said that “reading the Bible doesn’t automatically lead to maturity” and he’s right. That's true even if we are reading it well! There isn’t a formula or a checklist that will guarantee us maturity. It’s a lifetime of work and we are constantly seeking shortcuts to our detriment.

So what do we do? The answer is certainly not to throw out the Bible. We need a better understanding of what the Bible is and what it means to us instead. I’ve been thinking about a few ways that we need to read the Bible and while there are more, I want to look at four. We’ll look at one this week and the other three next week.³

We need to read the Bible with community

Most of us grew up with an evangelical idea of a quiet time. I open my Bible in my quiet and read, looking for a nugget to take with me or a rule that I needed to follow.⁴ That probably hasn’t gotten most of us as far as we expected. It’s hard to find a practical application in the long list of sacrifices or the detailed blueprints on assembling the tabernacle. Ezekiel leaves us confused not inspired; offended, not eager for communion with God. Revelation either freaks us out or conjures up images of televangelists telling us when the rapture would occur.

I still read my Bible on my own. But what really helps with reading the Bible is reading it with other people. You get the benefit of what they’ve learned and they get to hear your perspective. You start to learn that other people are confused sometimes or asking questions or aren’t sure what to do with a story. Few things calm us down more than realizing there isn’t something wrong with us; instead, confusion and uncertainty is part of the process.⁵ We can read with others in a variety of ways.

Read with scholars

Read good scholarship about the Bible. I can assure you that if you’re upset about something the Bible says, other people have been too and some of them have done a lot of work to reckon with the passage.⁶ You are not the first person to have had these questions. Someone has obsessed over geography and the world of the ancient Israelite and biblical cosmology and how the law compares to the laws of the surrounding lands. Let the work of other people benefit you.⁷

Read with people who are not like you

Read with people who do not have your same culture or social status. Maybe these people are in your neighborhood and you can pull them together. Maybe they have a podcast that you can listen to. Maybe you can read their books. Justo Gonzalez talks about reading the Bible as surveying a landscape. What you are looking at looks different based on where you are standing. Some people are on a hill. Some have the sun in their eyes. We need to listen to different others when we read the Bible.⁸

Read with your community

The Bible was designed to be read out loud. Read it on your own in your room, but read it with others as well. Let people ask weird questions and learn not to freak out. Make spaces where people can talk their way to something without being condemned for not having everything right. Let your interpretation get polished into something better by pushback and reflection and questions. Read with community. Friends don’t let friends read the Bible alone. We can put that on a t-shirt, right?

We’ll move on to the rest next week but I’d love to hear: what has been your experience with the Bible? How have you read with others or is that something you’ve rarely done?

1. This is not to disparage myself. I consider genuine scholars to be people pursuing or having academic Ph.Ds. This is to distinguish myself from that at this point.

2. This is the best time to be able to do the work. We have so many easily accessible resources!

3. Why am I not writing about advent? Literally every other person on the internet is.

4. Maybe in the 2010s, we also had coffee or a candle and we took a picture for social media.

5. Along with many wonderful things! We’re just better at saying those.

6. While there are people whose solution is to say we cannot accept that passage or the Bible as a whole, there are lots of scholars who hold to orthodoxy and wrestle with Scripture. You want to find the second.

7. I’m going to include some resources at the end of the next post!

8. I watched this video in a seminary class and I played it for my Bible students as well.