The Journey Continues: The Bible

My wife likes to read and respond thoughtfully to posts placed on the Reddit Christianity page. Sometimes the posts are simple questions, easy to answer. Sometimes they are bait to lure the reader into responding so that the poster can engage in an online confrontational argument. Sometimes the questions my wife shares with me stir something inside of me, which was the case of a recent post she shared with me. 

The poster, who professed to be a Christian, was struggling with reading the Bible. They just couldn't seem to do it. They wanted to, but never did. There were some responses that were easy answers, like "get into a Bible study", or "just read it cover-to-cover", etc. 

But it made me think why I don't read the Bible. I have my daily devotions which consist of a morning prayer from the Lutheran Prayer Book, then a selected reading from C.S. Lewis' writings in a book titled "Business of Heaven", and then, during this time I've been on medical leave, I've read books that discuss being close to God, or how the Love of God is manifest in human compassion during our darkest moments, and most recently, a book about the sacred places (both to Christians and Native Americans) in the Southwest.

But not the Bible. 

My wife, after sharing that post about the Christian unable or unwilling to read the Bible, asked me why I don't read the Bible. I really did not have an answer. I didn't know. 

Perhaps it had to do with a comment made to me decades ago by a well-meaning but narrow-minded Christian friend, who told me that unless I read the Bible daily and prayed daily, my Christianity wasn't real. That's a paraphrase, but what bothered me (and I left that church soon after that) was that this person made my personal faith conditional: that I MUST do those things in order to be a "good" Christian. That still sticks with me some 40-odd years later. Perhaps my unwillingness to read the Bible is a response to that person's comment. 

Perhaps it's because I, like many others, think we have to read the Bible cover-to-cover, as you would read a book. That is daunting, especially if you consider the early books such as Leviticus and Numbers - books which contain laws and rules for the Hebrews that we may find irrelevant today (or may cherry-pick to support an argument). 

So, I decided, after this recent conversation with my wife, to approach this "reading the Bible" differently. Rather than just jump into it, I wish to do it thoughtfully. I've been wanting to study the Gospel of John for years, but I've wanted to really steep myself in it. So, I've decided to just do an approach where I read until something speaks to me, and then stop. I have two different Bibles that I will use for this: a New King James version, and an English Standard version, which is a study Bible. I plan to take notes, but more importantly, I plan to read without a "plan": to allow the Spirit to guide me as I read, and speak to me about what I've read. 

And I plan to bring you, my readers, along on this journey. I find that as I think about this, my plan is to not have a plan, much like my road trips. Oh, I'll have an overall area or destination that I am wanting to get to. But my route may change on a whim. Or I may take detours or side trips. Such will be my study. I want to read John's Gospel, and follow that up with the Book of Acts, then John's two Epistles, then maybe Ephesians and/or Galatians, and then stop occasionally in the Psalms. 

And I really do not know where this will take me, which is the beauty of it. But I know I will be blessed and edified. 

Soli Deo Gloria