I’ve been thinking through helpful ideas I’ve been taught for how to read the Bible. While Bible *study* skills are important, Bible *reading* skills are also vital. And so, I want to post some of those ideas I’ve found useful. I don’t think that ANY of these ideas are original to me!, so I’d love to hear your ideas, too. Today, here is the first thought…!
How do I read the Bible? — Read the Bible as a story. What I mean by that is that we want to read the Bible with the understanding that when we open it to a particular chapter and verse, we’re jumping into part of the story.
For example, if I pull “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from the shelf and read page 87, I read it with the understanding that page 87 only makes sense in view of the WHOLE STORY. I’ll learn something about Mark Twain or his characters on page 87, but I keep in mind that I’m reading one section of a much larger story. Knowing that, I can seek to fit what I zoom in on on page 87 into what I already know about the whole story.
Just as it makes sense that I can only understand page 87 of Huckleberry Finn when I learn more about the rest of the story, in a similar way I find that I can better understand small sections of the Bible when I read them with a view towards the “rest of the story.”
Instead of zoning out and reading the Bible like it’s a cryptic, mysterious religious book, I can read the Bible as one story by one Author with a message to convey. I may not understand everything on this one page at this moment, but as I keep reading the story (and keep believing/obeying what I do understand!), the Author will keep revealing his message.
Reading the Bible this way also helps keep me from cutting and pasting the Author’s words into personal life-application that the Author has no intention of conveying. Just as we’d never isolate a phrase at *random* from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn to sum up Twain’s message in his story, reading the Bible to understand *God’s* story helps us be careful not to splice the Bible’s message into soundbites that the Author isn’t intending to convey in his Story.
And just what is that Story of the Bible? Until next time… 🙂
I’m 31 years old and I’ve read the entire Bible a few times. It’s an extraordinary habit
I love your thoughts on this. The more I study the Bible, the more I value the time I’ve spent simply reading it. The breadth of my reading informs my studying, putting a particular passage in the context of the whole Book. Great example, Amanda.
Yes, I agree! Thanks for that, Jana. -amanda