The Joy of Reading The Bible –Yes!

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 2^nd-4rth paragraphs of this Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_English_Bible_translations

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.