This post was originally posted as a guest blog at Discipleship For Women.
I was a devoted Christ-follower for over two decades before I learned what a mess I’d been making of my Bible. I’m not talking about all the colorful highlighting and note-filled margins. I’m talking about the way I was reading it—what parts I chose to read, what I expected to get out of it, and how I chose to apply it to my life.
I was treating my Bible in a completely different way than I would treat any other book on my shelves. In retrospect, the Bible reading habits I developed might provide a good laugh if the consequences weren’t so devastatingly life-altering … and if I was the only one practicing them. But I’m not alone. A quick glance at how folks typically apply Scripture on their social media offers plentiful evidence.
The Bible is the most important book in the world, and because it speaks of spiritual matters and is written by both God and man, some deem it unspiritual or too intellectual to learn how to read it. I couldn’t disagree more. The Bible itself teaches us that we must learn how to read it:
Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15)
The Word of Truth is the Gospel of Jesus—the truth He came to bring, which is revealed to us in all of Scripture. If we are commanded to handle the word rightly, that infers there’s a wrong way to handle it. I don’t believe I will ever solve every scholarly dilemma when it comes to translation or original context, but I can do my best to eliminate gross errors like the ones I’ll discuss here. Of course, as students of Scripture, we will continue to learn and grow for a lifetime. But changing these three habits will take our Bible reading to a new, and far more accurate level—which will affect our daily lives and our relationship with God in very significant ways.
Silly Habit #1: The Flip and Point
I would never grab a history book off my bookshelf, offer a quick prayer for God’s guidance in my day, start flipping the pages, abruptly stop flipping by pointing randomly (eyes closed) to a spot on a page, then read whatever my finger landed on and consider that an answer to my prayer.
But I’ve done it with the Bible more times than I’d like to admit.
Yes, I know the Bible is more than a mere history book. It is living and active and when illuminated by the Holy Spirit has supernatural power. But does that mean we are supposed to treat it like a magical book of spells, or a slot machine of advice? No … but that’s what I was doing, and it had life-altering consequences for me. I completely ignored the wise counsel of my parents at a very critical time in life because I flipped and pointed to the following verse:
"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:26
I did not take the time to read any of the verses that came before or after this verse, and I surely didn’t take time to dig into the systematic teachings of the Bible on how to make wise decisions in situations like the one I was in. I simply took the one verse as permission to pridefully disregard my parents and move confidently in the direction of foolishness. Thankfully, God is great at redeeming our messes.
When we flip and point, we are not only in danger of egregious misapplication, but we are inadvertently dishonoring the authors—both God and the human authors. Imagine putting your heart and soul into writing a letter only to discover the person you wrote to only read a few sentences that had been randomly selected by flipping and pointing. That’s what we’re doing to the Apostle Paul (and God). When we randomly pick and apply a verse out of Ephesians, we’re picking a line or two out of a whole letter he wrote to the church at Ephesus. There is no way we can get much of anything accurate out of reading it that way.
Only after taking the time to read the entire letter or poem or historical account (there are many genres of literature in the Bible) can we expect to get the most out of it … just as with anything else we read. It might take a couple of sittings, but I recommend always reading the entire book of the Bible you are studying several times to really enjoy the fullness of it. Read it out loud if you can.
Silly Habit #2: Stealing the Spotlight
Another thing I wouldn’t do is read a letter written thousands of years before I was born as if it were written to me. Or read an historical account about a woman living before the time of Christ and act as if I was the protagonist in the story. But that’s what I did with my Bible. Though I knew the Bible taught us about God and Jesus and told stories of our faith heroes, my time in the Word was spent searching for my story—who I am—what I am supposed to do with my life—how I can get my prayers answered.
I might not have expected to see the name Teasi pop up in the minor prophets, but I read and searched the Bible as if it were all about me—as if every page was filled with written instructions left to me by a personal life coach in the sky.
Truth is, the Bible is not written to me or about me. It’s not written to you or about you. It’s written to the Children of Israel and to the early church and it’s about … Jesus. He is the hero of every story from start to finish.
The Bible is, however, written for us, and we can learn everything we need pertaining to life and godliness as we study God’s written revelation of Himself and His written plans for redeeming mankind. Focusing on the character, actions, and plans of God does teach us about ourselves because we are His creation made in His image for His purposes. And as we read about God and His redemptive plans, we do get answers to our biggest questions:
Where did I come from? Where am I going after I die? What’s the point of life? Why do I see so much evil in the world?
But we learn these answers in light of God’s big story—not our own.
Next time you sit down to read your Bible, pray that God will reveal more to you about Himself than ever before. Start highlighting everything it says about Him—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Think about what He is doing, what glorifies Him and what doesn’t. I’ll be honest, looking for God and meditating on His story as I read always leaves me far more satisfied and fulfilled.
Silly Habit #3: Bossing the Bible Around
The final thing I can’t imagine doing is reading a complex instruction manual with a friend and then taking turns telling each other “what I feel like this means to me is ...” Why? Because feelings are a fickle indicator of truth, and we aren’t the ones who determine the meaning. The author is. As readers, it’s our job to find what the author meant. And sometimes that’s not simple. Sometimes we must dig.
But we do this with the Bible all the time. I’ll bet you don’t have to think too far back to remember someone asking, “What does this verse mean to you?” But think about how crazy this is. If I have meaning and you have a meaning and everyone in our small group has a meaning, then before you know it, we’ve made the reading of Scripture nearly meaningless. It becomes a subjective volley of my meaning against yours, and what if our meanings are contradictory? Who is right? And why are we telling God what He means in the first place?
The question we really should be asking is, “How does this truth apply to you?” because application quite often will be subjective. But we can’t know how to apply a portion of Scripture to our life until we know what it means. And here’s the deal: The Bible will never mean what it never meant.
When God superintended the human authors to pen His story, He did it over thousands of years, in multiple locations and in multiple genres. He used poetry, letters, historical accounts, wisdom literature, and more. And all these writings had an intended audience—the original readers or hearers who lived in a time, place, and culture far removed from us. When they read or heard God’s messages, they predominantly knew what it meant because it pertained directly to specific issues in their time. They were familiar with the literary styles, rhetorical devices, and figurative language used.
But we aren’t. We’ve got to do some digging (exegesis)—a bit like going back in time—to do our best to think like the original audience, see what it meant to them, and only then to do our best to determine the timeless truth. Once we see it, we can ask the Holy Spirit for His guidance in applying His truth to our contemporary situations.
Using a good study Bible will take us a good long way toward understanding the original culture. All those footnotes, maps, and charts (that we often skip) are provided to us by the men and women who devote their lives to translating the original languages, understanding the ancient literature, and describing the ancient cultures. The resources I’ve recommended below also contain suggestions on additional study tools such as Bible dictionaries, Encyclopedias, and commentaries.
Next time you read your Bible, take time to read all the good stuff the scholars have contributed, starting with all the preface information before Genesis. And when you do … thank God for them!
Recommended Resources:
Women of the Word: How to Study the Bible with Both our Hearts and Our Minds by Jen Wilkin
How to Read the Bible for All Its Wroth by Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart
The Bible Project video series “How to Read the Bible” https://thebibleproject.com/all-videos/how-to-read-the-bible/
Two of my favorite study Bibles: The ESV Study Bible; The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible