Can we begin with the basic assumption that the vast majority of us rarely read the Bible?
A not insignificant percentage of us do have the Bible read to us. That itself is unique, placing Scripture in a unique location in our lived experienced compared to other ancient texts.
Even if you never crack open a Bible yourself (and most of us don’t) if you attend a worship service in the Jewish or Christian tradition someone reads the Bible out loud to you.
How often is that? Well, Millenials self-report that about 11% of them attend worship weekly. Gen Xers a whopping 27%. The rest report a few times a year or never. So let’s be generous and say somewhere around one-fourth of adults listen to the Bible read to them for about ten minutes or so on a Sunday morning.
I want to make sure we get the baseline right before considering the implications, so dear reader if you are willing, can you share your additional Bible reading practices. Do you think very many people are reading the Bible very much on their own, and if so how and where?
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So what do we think reading the Bible does? In classic Christian dogmatics Scripture was considered the source and norm of faith. That is to say, you looked to the Bible for the truth. And in a sense (although this is sometimes missed by those of a more fundamentalist bent) you looked to the Bible as the place through which you could encounter truth as a Person.
However, I think our culture has largely shifted to a new perspective on the role or function of sacred texts in the pantheon of texts. I think the vast majority of people, even those who may read the Bible with some regularity, still do not look at the Bible as “the” source and norm.
If we simply take account of time commitments and practice, we see this indicated by what people DO. Readers look to lots of texts for truth these days, from the newspaper to social media, from novels to works of non-fiction.
Scripture is just one text in the midst of these texts, and although there may be some residual holiness ascribed to the Bible (it gets a special place on the coffee table) or cultural solemnity (you swear on it in a court of law), the Bible is now thought of differently than it was. True in some parts but not all. Abused and misused especially through zealous over-application and so dangerous and problematic.
I think in general we doubt whether one text, especially such an ancient text, can really be the source and norm of all truth claims, and more importantly we rightfully struggle when that one text, the Bible, gets used in an attempt to squash the honest and truthful testimonial of others.
We could get into a long and drawn out hermeneutical discussion here, but it really boils down to whether or not we should elevate an ancient text—stewarded by translators and redactors and the church over these millennia—over the lived experience of humans right now.
Does the Bible have that kind of capacity? Is it that generative and replete? Would we even want it to be?
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I might offer a paradoxical response to this question. What if I told you I thought the Bible WAS that capacious, but also that we don’t need it to be?
That is to say I agree with the many theologians over centuries who, after long and careful scrutiny of the Bible, came to honest and fearful conclusion, “This book has everything!”
I agree both because the Bible really is a big book, like a library, and there’s so much in it. But I also agree because there is a way of reading texts (especially rich ancient texts like the Bible) that reads the space between the words in such a way that entire universes are discoverable between the lines. the Bible is like the cosmos or the human brain in that sense—it contains multitudes.
But also we don’t need the Bible to be that big, if its big-ness then supplants the big-ness of human experience and the breadth of the book of creation itself.
Do I need the Bible to discover the grandeur of God when I have the James Webb telescope?
Well, what if I told you we didn’t have to choose one over the other?
What if the Bible is actually so big we don’t need the telescope and the telescope shows us so much we don’t need the Bible and both of those things are true at the same time?
I mean this may be a messy philosophical point but whatever is big and in our mind at the time fills our attention and we simply can’t attend to everything all at once. We might love the idea of a novel written in five dimensions, as proposed in Oleh Shynkarenko’s wild Ukrainian science fiction novel Karharlyk. But we will need to acknowledge the truth of such a novel, that no one can read the whole thing, and you can’t even look at the whole thing at once.
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Is this perhaps why we mostly don’t read the Bible? Is it actually because it’s so huge? Holy? Revered? So it’s like Moses going up the mountain to speak to God, most of the rest of the people stayed down mountain and were like, “Nope, uh uh, not going up there. Get too close to God and you die.” Is it possible our practice of (not) reading the Bible is a form of ironic respect?
If so we’re in good company because throughout much of Christian tradition the church leaders suspected we’d be better off if most people didn’t read the Bible. The entire period of time from the translation of the Bible into Latin until around the time Jan Hus was translating it into Czech and Wyclif into English and Luther into German, nobody really read the Bible, not even the priests because even the priests (for the most part) didn’t know Latin except the parts they memorized in order to conduct the Mass.
So what are we doing when we are (not) reading the Bible? Well, we’re joining a long and storied history of humanity not reading it, that’s what. And as a pastor who is part of that tiny tribe of readers1 who does read it2, I guess I should keep that in mind.
Anyway, if you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading. I’ve asked our congregation to simply go and find their Bibles and bring them to worship Sunday. If you haven’t read yours in a while it might be an interesting exercise to go find the physical artifact and ask yourself what it means to you. And if you do read the Bible regularly it would be instructive to me and many others if you told us why you do what you do and what it means to you.
I’m part of that unusual group of readers who also reads lots of other ancient texts. This past year I’ve read a new translation of the Tao, re-read The Odyssey, and have been making my way through the Icelandic Sagas, to name of few really old things I’m reading.
Although I do not have a daily devotional habit with it. My reading habits are more centered around encountering it as I read theological works that discuss it and also my preparation for Sunday worship and preaching.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesleyan_Quadrilateral
I and my biological family have been daily Bible readers for decades. Some only read the snippets that come with Guideposts or Portals of Prayer and the like. Others are deep into their reading and study.
That makes sense as to why I was called to ministry at the age of 14, Confirmation in the LCMS. I left the denomination after the enlightenment of college for the LCA, which was instrumental in my movement into the pastorate. Now after 29 years of ordination, a new ministry is calling.