The commitment to read the Bible daily may not be the biggest challenge of The OneYear Bible reading challenge I have set before our church family. The bigger challenge may be in understanding what we are reading, especially since we will be reading all of it and not just our favourite verses. We may be surprised to find within the New Testament things like “slaves, obey your masters,” and “women must be silent in the church.” What we find in the Old Testament may be even more surprising.
As we read through the Bible, let us keep in mind what the Bible is and what it is not. It is not one book dropped into our laps, prewritten in heaven. It is a compilation of many writings, written by many people at different times under different circumstances, and using different genres of writing. It is “God-breathed,” but it is not God-dictated.
We do well to understand how the various writings that make up the Scriptures came about. I am going to borrow from N.T. Wright here who in the book “The New Testament in Its World: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians” points to three words to keep in mind as we read the Bible, these being, not surprisingly, history, literature, and theology. Things happened in history (history). People had beliefs about what happened and what it meant (theology). People wrote about both the history and what it meant (literature).
Keeping in mind history, theology, and literature will help keep us from “adventures in missing the point” to borrow an expression from a book by Tony Campolo and Brian McClaren We can miss the point of the Scriptures when we fail to think through the context of their writing. We miss the point when we treat every word of the Bible as the very words of God for all people and all time rather than thinking of the writings as recording the response of people to what God was doing in their specific time and place, which does of course speak to us about what is true for all people and all times. There is a subtle and important difference there.
Let me give one example of missing the point, or of how not to read the Bible. Here is a quote I came across sometime ago, though I don’t remember the original source:
Since we cannot be absolutely certain that God finds the use of musical instruments an appropriate form of worship, then it seems quite foolish to risk His wrath by adding something which He did not clearly authorize us to do during collective worship. Our only assurance of practicing acceptable Christian worship is to disregard man-made creeds and turn to God’s Word as our only authoritative guide to worship. Unless we pattern our worship after the first century church, we can have no assurance that God approves of our assemblies
Source unknown
This makes God out to be a bit of a bully. Such a theology builds upon treating the Bible far too literally, and far too seriously as a bunch of God-dictated rules rather than a collection of God-breathed responses. Such a stringent view of the Bible, and God, messes with peoples heads, making understanding and living out every word of the Bible, neither of which can actually be done, the main goal. If that is our goal, we have missed the point. The key moment in history where God showed up was in Jesus, who took the nails. Bullies don’t get nailed to a cross and then given the chance to get even, offer forgiveness instead. God is not the bully we make him out to be when we don’t read the Bible well.
What does an adventure in getting the point look like instead? Let us consider the writing of someone who spent time with Jesus:
We proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning, whom we have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands. He is the Word of life. This one who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen him. And now we testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is eternal life. He was with the Father, and then he was revealed to us. We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy.
1 John 1:1-4 (NLT)
Something, or better, someone happened in history; Jesus. John experienced that and it was life changing, challenging and changing what John thought about God. Based on John’s interaction with Jesus what did John come to believe?
God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us….Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world….God is love…
1 John 4:9-12,14,15 (NLT)
In reading the Bible, let us watch for how people responded to God who moved in history. This is more difficult in the Old Testament which spans a lot of rather complicated history. However, in the New Testament, there is one unique person who enters into history, Jesus. Because of Jesus, people changed what they were thinking about God and people changed. Then they wrote about it and because of it. Through their writings we discover the one who changes us. Reading the Bible well can change the world.
Thinking Through Scripture 