Trading in fortune cookies for Biblical understanding (1/3)

This blog has been dominated so far by discussion on the nature of the Bible. We haven’t covered science, politics, the end times, movements of the Spirit, or any other such topics. I’m not surprised since our understanding of the Bible builds a foundation for our opinions on the other subjects.

And although my first few posts may have raised your suspicion as to my dependence on scripture, let me make something clear: Although I believe treating the Bible as the center of Christianity is misguided, I also think the importance of the Bible for Christians cannot be overstated.

It is not the center of our faith, but it is the infallible, authoritative source and God’s word on his nature, the nature of our lives, and our relationship to him.

Therefore it is of highest importance to me to take the Bible seriously, to find out what’s really in it and to corrupt its message as little as possible with my own agenda.

What’s the problem?

I have come to believe that our most common Bible-reading techniques to not meet any of the three above objectives. The main problem is how much we read each day. Reading a verse, a paragraph, or a chapter at a time is a really bad idea.

Reading, studying, discussing, and preaching on the Bible in short bursts doesn’t take the Bible seriously in that it ignores the Bible’s self-established format of books. When you read any other book, do you commonly cite one sentence to make an important point? How about reading it one paragraph or one page at a time?

Worsening the situation further is that our current Biblical divisions (chapters and verses) are totally arbitrary and don’t have much to do with the original authors’ words. Would you read a book that someone else had gone through first, inserting lines and divisions all over the place that had little to do with the actual book content? The Bible is a collection of 66 books, not 31,000 fortune cookies.

The combination of reading such short segments and breaking them up with little numbers all over the page is that it is very hard to tell what the books of the Bible are truly about. Knowing, though, that we are supposed to glean truth from the Bible nonetheless, we concentrate harder or pray or expect revelations from God’s Spirit to just reveal what the heck we’re reading.

The Bible isn’t supposed to be boring or difficult to understand. Just the opposite, it’s the most exciting and transcending book ever written! With a little historical/cultural background info, a notebook to take notes in, and someone with which to discuss what you’re reading, I can’t imagine or more exciting, enjoyable, motivating, or spiritual process.

In the next post, I'll expose more of how the way we tend to read the Bible is so... unbiblical.