So, how
can reading The Bible be a joy? Think of it this way. What is The Bible? Do we
not believe it is the Word of God? In other words, it is God ‘speaking’ to us.
That is even why some advocate reading it aloud. They might even quote verses
like Romans 10:17 “Consequently faith comes from what is
heard, and what is heard comes through the preached word of Christ.”
You can’t listen to a person if they don’t make themselves
audible. Now, most of us don’t ever seem to have the experience of really
hearing what we think is God’s voice, even though we believe God is personal.
Those distinctions aside, what else do we believe about God?
He is love; ergo, he loves us. What does someone who loves another want to do?
Spend time with their loved one, right? I think there is enough in the Bible to
support that idea. What about the other side? How much do we love God? This
brings me to my first point about how to make reading The Bible more enjoyable:
1.
Spend more time reading it. Yes,
in some ways, it’s as simple as that. I remember once reading a piece written
as if it were God speaking. God was there all day in this person’s life. There
were so many times God
thought, ‘Oh, now this person is going to talk to me or
listen to me.’ Can’t you imagine the excitement a lover feels when s/he
actually gets to be with and communicate with their lover? Unfortunately, God
was mostly disappointed. Indeed, by the end of the day, not much had really
happened between God and this supposed child of His.
You see, for too many of us, we initially do have a hard
time understanding and therefore don’t enjoy the word because we simply don’t
give it time. I am as guilty of that as anyone. When you were beginning to see
your lover, did you have to make appointments or set dates? Indeed, to begin with
we might also need to set dates with God, times when we will read his word and
open ourselves up to hearing from Him/Her (I recognize that God is neither male
nor female but it gets awkward to try to always use gender-neutral language about
God, so I will remain mostly guilty (?) of using the masculine). This setting
aside a part of the day for The Word, for God then really, is an old custom,
often referred to as one’s daily devotional time. We might simply need to use a
little (a lot of?) self-discipline and start there.
It’s a little like the experience of those of you who might
have known for some time, and even had connections with, a person who was not
your lover to begin with. Only when you realized that’s where you were at in
your relationship did being with that person move from a less emotional ‘time’
to a state where you looked forward to and enjoyed being with that person. And
some of that progression might simply have occurred because you spent more time
with this person and got to know this person better and realized you wanted
more of this!
Take it from me – you can
experience this. Then you realize the truth of all those psalms that talk about
delighting in God’s word, e.g. Psalm 119:174 “I long for your
deliverance, O Lord; I find delight in your
law.”
There are other things you can do too:
2.
Read it in a version you like and think
you can understand
One of the first translations in my lifetime that fell into
this category was called Good News for Modern Man.
I am not sure it is still available. Another that our church
acquired when we were having ELL/ESL classes was the Contemporary
English Version. Another one you might have or have heard
of is The Message. For the longest
time, I was under the false impression this was a paraphrase, not a
translation, so I did not consider getting a copy. When I realized it was
indeed a translation and how much work had been put into it, I did get a copy.
I have had it for over a year and do enjoy reading it. All the same, it is only
recently I have started to read it through, cover to cover. I do now recommend
it.
Ultimately though, any version is probably better for
today’s reader than the AV/KJV I referred to in my previous posting. Having said
that, those of us who grew up with it still appreciate it. It is regarded as a
classic work of English.
Current translations really started to proliferate around
the middle of the last century. I will not go into all of them here but refer
the reader to the 2nd-4rth paragraphs of this Wikipedia article:
These are all good and you will find copies of all of them
in our home but one. Having been schooled more in Bible study than some, I
never did get the paraphrased The Living Bible. For
serious Bible study, one cannot rely on paraphrases.
3.
Read it all through
Her again, to make a point, let’s make a comparison we can
all grasp. Have you ever thought you got the whole story of a novel just by reading
certain sections? Of course not. How would you even know what sections to read?
If you asked others who have read the novel, you could get a variety of answers
as to what sections were most important. Yet we think we can get away with this
with the Bible. Given how The Church came to understand how the Bible came to
us, The Church in its wisdom long concluded that everything from Genesis to
Revelation is there as one continuous text, even story. If you really want to
get the point of it all, read it through. The more you do so, the more you will
get to know it… and enjoy it. After all, you will be finding yourself more in
the company of that Lover we talked about earlier, and who doesn’t like that?
In this context, I always remember hearing as a young boy
the testimony of an older indigenous leader who was visiting us, Chief Cook of
Bloodvein, MB. He said he only really began to grasp the full message on or
after his third reading of The Word.
4.
Read it with others
This might not be a suggestion you anticipated. In our
Western society, we just don’t realize how individualistic we are. We might not
realize that when The Bible was written, it was written within a community. It
was often a plural form that was meant when a pronoun refers to a speaker or
writer. No one was presumptuous enough to claim individual expertise in any of
these areas.
This was
why the Jewish community developed synagogues. They read, listened to and
discussed The Law and The Prophets as well as their Wisdom literature with one
another. Even the rabbis and scribes listened to one another. Indeed, one of
the marvels, and criticisms, levelled at Jesus was that he spoke of his own
authority: Matthew 7:28-9 “When Jesus
finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed by his teaching, 7:29 because he taught them like
one who had authority, not like their experts [scribes and rabbis – my
addition] in the law.”
Jesus did not preface of conclude remarks with something
like, this is what so and so rabbi(s) have said, as his contemporary speakers
would have when they talked of the bible they had at the time. Indeed, by
Jesus’ time this collected wisdom of the Jewish experts had grown into a body
of work, The Talmud, far larger than The Torah, or The Law, on which it was
based.
The Early Church also met to hear and discuss the word in
small groups; ‘house churches’ we have come to call them. Unfortunately, most
of this died away when The Church became institutionalized as a religion when
the Roman Empire co-opted it as its official religion early in the 4rth century.
Soon, The Church had gone the same path the Jews had: only the experts, the
authorities in The Church, clerics and officials from priests on up could read
The Bible and tell you what it meant. Even the title ‘priest,’ not found in
reference to a special class within The New Testament, smacks of the
institutionalization of religion in The Old Testament.
We as heirs of the Anabaptist tradition from the period of
the Reformation, can be happy our spiritual ancestors revived the earlier
practices of studying The Word for themselves and in small groups. Sprinkled
through their writings you will find the beliefs that The Bible alone is the
authority, not The Church. It was regarded as the authoritative guide to
salvation and for life. At the same time, they recognized that it is not The
Bible, not its words, that save, it is whom they point to - Jesus. This
viewpoint keeps us from idolizing The Bible itself.
These ideas are summarized in the last sentence of the first
paragraph of article 4. Scripture of Confession of Faith in a
Mennonite Perspective, which our denomination has
adopted: “We seek to understand and interpret scripture in
harmony with Jesus Christ as we are led by the Holy Spirit in the church (italics mine). The first italicized portion
means we interpret all scripture through our understanding of Jesus, his life
as an example, and what he is reported to have said. For example, a quote from
the Old Testament does not have the same weight as something attributed to
Jesus in the New Testament. The second italic is also key. Note that it does
not say the Holy Spirit and the church. We do not believe you can interpret scripture by either the Holy
Spirit or the church. We must do it corporately, within the church. This helps
us prevent individuals form going astray in their understanding. Too often when
this happens, such individuals, because they firmly believe contrary to the majority,
end up leading a breakaway group which often becomes a cult that deviates from
what scripture really says, as understood by most The Church. This is why
Anabaptists, and indeed most Protestant groups, have long had the practice of
group Bible Study of its members in small groups. It is why we often go to
great lengths to consult within many in the church about the meaning of
scripture rather than follow one person’s idea. Maybe it’s as simple as the
more Spirit led individuals there are agreeing on something, the more likely it
is to be acceptable that what one person says.
5.
Read it with help – study bible,
commentaries etc.
Finally, when you are still having difficulty, or want to
see what more you can learn from a passage besides what you have gleaned
yourself, look for help from others. We alluded to that in the previous point
when we talked about interpreting scripture in community. However, we are fortunate
to have an abundance of resources to help us in our study of The Word. Nowadays
these are both on-line, in electronic form or in hard copy. Indeed, sometimes we
need to turn to one another for help in finding out what are the more reputable
study bibles or commentaries and books written on the Bible and to help us
understand it better. As Anabaptists, we are blessed to have those who have
helped fashion the Believers Church Bible Commentary, which helps us interpret scripture
along the lines of our own Anabaptist theology. Unfortunately, it I still 20 books
short of covering the whole bible.
With that, I simply close by
saying – keep on reading, more and more. The more you do, the more you will
learn, the easier it will become, and the more enjoyable it will become. You
will get to the point where you can say with the psalmist (or sing it if you
know the song with the words) Psalm 42:1 “As a deer longs for streams of water,
so I long for you, O God!” For us finite creatures, that means through the modes
of prayer and reading and meditating on His Word. Again, we give The Word the
last sentiment: Psalm 119:97 “O how I
love your law! All day long I meditate on it.” Would we could all really say
that with the psalmist.
