Why Is Bible Reading SO Hard?
My daughter just completed Kindergarten and she has been learning to read. I love reading with her, it is such a joy! We read her "Jesus Storybook Bible" by Sally Lloyd-Jones (an excellent children's Bible!) together and she slowly makes her way through sounding out the larger words. At times she will finish reading a paragraph, point to a couple words from one sentence and say, "That doesn't make any sense."
I then show her how the words fit together within the context of the sentence and then the larger context of the paragraph which can help clarify the confusion for her. On occasion she will still say that it doesn't make sense. At that point, I zoom all the way out and I remind her of the big picture that the story is telling, and then work my way back in close to explain what is being said in light of the story. This usually clears things up nicely, but sometimes confusion remains and so I have one final pedagogical (teaching) aid that I offer to her, but before we look at that let's consider how often we adults can have the same problems during our own devotional Bible reading time.
I have found that over the years as I have grown and matured as a believer my devotional methods have changed also. This is an oversimplified list, but it seems fairly accurate and maybe one that you can identify with:
1) Devotions as 'Open and read and apply whatever speaks to me.' - As a young believer I once thought that this was a great way to have the Lord speak to us, simply flip open your Bible, put your finger on a verse and read. If it didn't make sense read the verses nearest to it with the goal of looking for something from that verse that speaks into my life that day. I am not going to take the time to show why this is a drastically inadequate approach to reading the Bible, but will comment below.
2) Devotions as 'Finding the main idea and how does it apply to my life.' - After growing a bit I came to realize the importance of reading the Bible in context. If all we ever do is read a verse here and a verse there how can we ever expect to really understand what is being communicated to us? Think of it as going to watch a movie in the theater, but you walk in 45 minutes after the movie began and you only stay for 5 or 10 minutes. You would have no idea of the greater message being communicated, and this is also true with Bible reading. Once coming to understand the importance of reading through entire books (and eventually the entire Bible too) I began learning much more of the Bible, the history, how each story has a 'main idea' that is being communicated, but the question remained, "How is all this historical Bible reading supposed to help me grow?"
The answer seemed to be the principles gleaned from the "Inductive Bible Study Method." The idea is that we are allowing Scripture to speak for itself, so after reading the entire story or section we would observe things about the text (repeated words or ideas, contrasts, relationships with previous or following stories etc), and then we would interpret the meaning or lesson of the text, which should also lead us to (or follow from) discovering the main idea of the passage. Finally we would apply the text to our lives, by uncovering the main idea it may also helps us to see what is the key to the message of that section. Often times once we get to 'applying' the text to our lives we ask, "How has this text ministered to me" and "What am I going to do about it?"
As I mentioned, what I loved about the many years of reading my Bible this way is that I was always learning more of the history and details of the books that I was reading and studying, however, not only is this method fairly complex (to do it correctly it requires a great deal of time and study of the culture, the author, the recipients etc), but I came to find that while we are reading the Bible to learn, it seems that in this method the summit of Bible reading becomes all about the application section where questions about me learning and changing my life ultimately become the focus of reading the Bible. This made me stop and wonder, "Why did God give us the Bible in the first place?"
Theologically speaking the Bible is in the category of "Special Revelation" because it's purpose is to reveal to us things about God. The more I think on this fact that the Bible is about God revealing Himself to us, the more I think that for all its benefits, the Inductive Method is not the best way to read the Scriptures, especially if the application section (as defined above) is given preeminence. With that said, I want to be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, I still think that the method is extremely valuable for study purposes as long as we avoid getting overwhelmed with minute details and we avoid over leveraging the 'all about me' aspect to the application section.
3) Devotions as 'Finding God more worthy of worship' - As with the IBS method our focus is on reading each passage within the context of the chapter, book, and Bible as a whole. Since the Bible is God's revelation of Himself, our main focus is to see what the passage teaches us about God. Why did God put this story and/or book in the Bible, does it teach us about God's holiness (the Pentateuch/law), does it teach us about God's faithfulness despite His people's many failures (the historical books - Joshua - 2 Chronicles), does it reveal God's longsuffering towards sin but His inevitable judgment of wickedness (Historical, Psalms, Wisdom lit, Prophets), does it teach us about how God has a plan and a glorious future for His peoples (Prophets and Eschatology), and/or does it teach us how Jesus is the fulfillment of all prophecy (2Cor1:20), He is the fulfillment of the sacrificial system (Hebrews 8-10), the fulfillment of the tabernacle/temple (John 2 & 4), the truly faithful Israelite (Hebrews 4), and the soon coming King that will reign from the New Jerusalem fulfilling the land promise made to Abraham (Hebrews 11:10) (the New Testament, but also the whole Bible!)?
Some will say, "But how will we ever change and grow if we don't apply the Bible to our lives?" There are two ways that we must apply the Bible to our lives, but I don't feel that the way I used to do so through the Inductive method were appropriate because they tend to leave us with a short list of thing that we need to do better. For example we read of the hall of faith from Hebrews 11 and we say to ourselves, "I need to do a much better job of trusting the Lord, this week I am going to prayerfully trust Him more no matter what happens." This is by no means a bad goal to have, however we must not miss the fact that the whole reason why Jesus had to come was that we were UNABLE to perfectly do all that the law required of us. We will never be able to muster up the faith that we ought to have simply by trying harder, this approach in the end sends us back to a legalistic approach to faith that will never save us.
So how should we apply the Bible? First when we read the Bible we see story after story of people just like us, people that constantly failed to trust God like they should have, people that though they loved God they got caught up loving other things more. The first way we apply the Bible to our lives is to see that we are still sinners in desperate need of a Savior! When we read of the failures of those in the Bible we see how we tend to fail in like manner. Then the second way that we apply the Bible to our lives is that once we see the kinds of sin that we are so prone to wander into, we also see how the Bible is always pointing us to look to Jesus as God's answer for sin. In the Old Testament we are reminded that one day the Redeemer will come and pay for our failures. In the New Testament we see lists of sins that we often stumble in, but we are reminded that where sin abounds grace does much more abound (Rom 6)!
Notice that when we approach reading Scripture in this way, we are daily brought face to face with our many failures, but more importantly we are reminded about what God has done. Reading this way we find ourselves daily repenting and being washed by the reminder of God's gracious offer of salvation through Jesus Christ. The Apostle John put it this way, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9 ESV) When reading our Bible this way, the only truly appropriate response is worship. How can we do anything but respond with awe and amazement when we read of the God that created us knowing that we would revolt against Him, and also knowing that our failure would lead Him to graciously send His Son to die for us. This is especially important considering Jesus' own words found in John 5 and Luke 24 that all of Scripture finds its fulfillment in Him! In short, the purpose of reading the Bible is to see our great failure and His incredible provision, and that knowledge should cause us to respond with humble hearts of worship and adoration.
Our response of worship is the only thing that will truly change us. As already mentioned if we look at applying the Scriptures to our lives as more of what we must do we are reverting back to the Law, and the Apostle Paul's warning in Galatians 3 is illuminating to us, "Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?" (Galatians 3:2-3 ESV) Our sanctification and Christian growth does not come from us manufacturing good behavior, in Romans 7 Paul made it clear that even he could not manufacture good behavior. In the end we see that the only answer is to find Jesus more glorious than anything that this earthly life has to offer.
James M. Boice said, "No one ever comes to truly know, honor, or worship God without being changed in the process." And so it is that only as we daily come to see Him more and more glorious will we be changed. The highest and most important aspect of applying the Scriptures to our lives must be to behold the revelation of God in His Word, then we will be changed by the worship that takes place in that moment.
At the opening of this post I mentioned that when my daughter Ellie is having a hard time understanding her Bible reading I first help her to understand the context of the sentence and paragraph. Then I back out and show her how they fit within the larger context of the story. Well the third and final help is to show her how this one story is just one piece of the larger puzzle that the Bible teaches us. The Bible unfolds for us God's Plan of Redemption. Whenever I am finding myself getting lost in chapters of genealogies or lengthy prophecies of doom, I need to take a step back and ask where does this fit into the greater story of the Good News?
Each genealogy is meticulously preserved for us to show that God swore to Adam and Eve that One would come from their line who would crush the serpents head. Then God swore to Abraham that his seed (Jesus - Gal 3) would be a blessing to all nations. To David God swore that from his line One would come that would rule and reign with an everlasting kingdom. So too, each prophecy of doom reminds us that one day God will relentlessly judge sin, but that until that day comes He has provided the sacrifice to end all sacrifices in His Son and we have been given the great and glorious task of proclaiming this Good News to those around us. Don't get lost in the details, be amazed and worship Emmanuel - God with us!
I then show her how the words fit together within the context of the sentence and then the larger context of the paragraph which can help clarify the confusion for her. On occasion she will still say that it doesn't make sense. At that point, I zoom all the way out and I remind her of the big picture that the story is telling, and then work my way back in close to explain what is being said in light of the story. This usually clears things up nicely, but sometimes confusion remains and so I have one final pedagogical (teaching) aid that I offer to her, but before we look at that let's consider how often we adults can have the same problems during our own devotional Bible reading time.
I have found that over the years as I have grown and matured as a believer my devotional methods have changed also. This is an oversimplified list, but it seems fairly accurate and maybe one that you can identify with:
1) Devotions as 'Open and read and apply whatever speaks to me.' - As a young believer I once thought that this was a great way to have the Lord speak to us, simply flip open your Bible, put your finger on a verse and read. If it didn't make sense read the verses nearest to it with the goal of looking for something from that verse that speaks into my life that day. I am not going to take the time to show why this is a drastically inadequate approach to reading the Bible, but will comment below.
2) Devotions as 'Finding the main idea and how does it apply to my life.' - After growing a bit I came to realize the importance of reading the Bible in context. If all we ever do is read a verse here and a verse there how can we ever expect to really understand what is being communicated to us? Think of it as going to watch a movie in the theater, but you walk in 45 minutes after the movie began and you only stay for 5 or 10 minutes. You would have no idea of the greater message being communicated, and this is also true with Bible reading. Once coming to understand the importance of reading through entire books (and eventually the entire Bible too) I began learning much more of the Bible, the history, how each story has a 'main idea' that is being communicated, but the question remained, "How is all this historical Bible reading supposed to help me grow?"
The answer seemed to be the principles gleaned from the "Inductive Bible Study Method." The idea is that we are allowing Scripture to speak for itself, so after reading the entire story or section we would observe things about the text (repeated words or ideas, contrasts, relationships with previous or following stories etc), and then we would interpret the meaning or lesson of the text, which should also lead us to (or follow from) discovering the main idea of the passage. Finally we would apply the text to our lives, by uncovering the main idea it may also helps us to see what is the key to the message of that section. Often times once we get to 'applying' the text to our lives we ask, "How has this text ministered to me" and "What am I going to do about it?"
As I mentioned, what I loved about the many years of reading my Bible this way is that I was always learning more of the history and details of the books that I was reading and studying, however, not only is this method fairly complex (to do it correctly it requires a great deal of time and study of the culture, the author, the recipients etc), but I came to find that while we are reading the Bible to learn, it seems that in this method the summit of Bible reading becomes all about the application section where questions about me learning and changing my life ultimately become the focus of reading the Bible. This made me stop and wonder, "Why did God give us the Bible in the first place?"
Theologically speaking the Bible is in the category of "Special Revelation" because it's purpose is to reveal to us things about God. The more I think on this fact that the Bible is about God revealing Himself to us, the more I think that for all its benefits, the Inductive Method is not the best way to read the Scriptures, especially if the application section (as defined above) is given preeminence. With that said, I want to be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, I still think that the method is extremely valuable for study purposes as long as we avoid getting overwhelmed with minute details and we avoid over leveraging the 'all about me' aspect to the application section.
3) Devotions as 'Finding God more worthy of worship' - As with the IBS method our focus is on reading each passage within the context of the chapter, book, and Bible as a whole. Since the Bible is God's revelation of Himself, our main focus is to see what the passage teaches us about God. Why did God put this story and/or book in the Bible, does it teach us about God's holiness (the Pentateuch/law), does it teach us about God's faithfulness despite His people's many failures (the historical books - Joshua - 2 Chronicles), does it reveal God's longsuffering towards sin but His inevitable judgment of wickedness (Historical, Psalms, Wisdom lit, Prophets), does it teach us about how God has a plan and a glorious future for His peoples (Prophets and Eschatology), and/or does it teach us how Jesus is the fulfillment of all prophecy (2Cor1:20), He is the fulfillment of the sacrificial system (Hebrews 8-10), the fulfillment of the tabernacle/temple (John 2 & 4), the truly faithful Israelite (Hebrews 4), and the soon coming King that will reign from the New Jerusalem fulfilling the land promise made to Abraham (Hebrews 11:10) (the New Testament, but also the whole Bible!)?
Some will say, "But how will we ever change and grow if we don't apply the Bible to our lives?" There are two ways that we must apply the Bible to our lives, but I don't feel that the way I used to do so through the Inductive method were appropriate because they tend to leave us with a short list of thing that we need to do better. For example we read of the hall of faith from Hebrews 11 and we say to ourselves, "I need to do a much better job of trusting the Lord, this week I am going to prayerfully trust Him more no matter what happens." This is by no means a bad goal to have, however we must not miss the fact that the whole reason why Jesus had to come was that we were UNABLE to perfectly do all that the law required of us. We will never be able to muster up the faith that we ought to have simply by trying harder, this approach in the end sends us back to a legalistic approach to faith that will never save us.
So how should we apply the Bible? First when we read the Bible we see story after story of people just like us, people that constantly failed to trust God like they should have, people that though they loved God they got caught up loving other things more. The first way we apply the Bible to our lives is to see that we are still sinners in desperate need of a Savior! When we read of the failures of those in the Bible we see how we tend to fail in like manner. Then the second way that we apply the Bible to our lives is that once we see the kinds of sin that we are so prone to wander into, we also see how the Bible is always pointing us to look to Jesus as God's answer for sin. In the Old Testament we are reminded that one day the Redeemer will come and pay for our failures. In the New Testament we see lists of sins that we often stumble in, but we are reminded that where sin abounds grace does much more abound (Rom 6)!
Notice that when we approach reading Scripture in this way, we are daily brought face to face with our many failures, but more importantly we are reminded about what God has done. Reading this way we find ourselves daily repenting and being washed by the reminder of God's gracious offer of salvation through Jesus Christ. The Apostle John put it this way, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9 ESV) When reading our Bible this way, the only truly appropriate response is worship. How can we do anything but respond with awe and amazement when we read of the God that created us knowing that we would revolt against Him, and also knowing that our failure would lead Him to graciously send His Son to die for us. This is especially important considering Jesus' own words found in John 5 and Luke 24 that all of Scripture finds its fulfillment in Him! In short, the purpose of reading the Bible is to see our great failure and His incredible provision, and that knowledge should cause us to respond with humble hearts of worship and adoration.
Our response of worship is the only thing that will truly change us. As already mentioned if we look at applying the Scriptures to our lives as more of what we must do we are reverting back to the Law, and the Apostle Paul's warning in Galatians 3 is illuminating to us, "Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?" (Galatians 3:2-3 ESV) Our sanctification and Christian growth does not come from us manufacturing good behavior, in Romans 7 Paul made it clear that even he could not manufacture good behavior. In the end we see that the only answer is to find Jesus more glorious than anything that this earthly life has to offer.
James M. Boice said, "No one ever comes to truly know, honor, or worship God without being changed in the process." And so it is that only as we daily come to see Him more and more glorious will we be changed. The highest and most important aspect of applying the Scriptures to our lives must be to behold the revelation of God in His Word, then we will be changed by the worship that takes place in that moment.
At the opening of this post I mentioned that when my daughter Ellie is having a hard time understanding her Bible reading I first help her to understand the context of the sentence and paragraph. Then I back out and show her how they fit within the larger context of the story. Well the third and final help is to show her how this one story is just one piece of the larger puzzle that the Bible teaches us. The Bible unfolds for us God's Plan of Redemption. Whenever I am finding myself getting lost in chapters of genealogies or lengthy prophecies of doom, I need to take a step back and ask where does this fit into the greater story of the Good News?
Each genealogy is meticulously preserved for us to show that God swore to Adam and Eve that One would come from their line who would crush the serpents head. Then God swore to Abraham that his seed (Jesus - Gal 3) would be a blessing to all nations. To David God swore that from his line One would come that would rule and reign with an everlasting kingdom. So too, each prophecy of doom reminds us that one day God will relentlessly judge sin, but that until that day comes He has provided the sacrifice to end all sacrifices in His Son and we have been given the great and glorious task of proclaiming this Good News to those around us. Don't get lost in the details, be amazed and worship Emmanuel - God with us!
Thank you Trevor. I enjoyed and appreciate this post! Love you, Linnie
ReplyDeleteThanks, Love you too Linnie!
DeleteThis reminds me of the old saying, "You cannot see the forest for the trees' meaning that we get so involved in the details of something that we forget or do not even realize the real purpose or importance of the thing as a whole. This is not to say that ANY part of the God's Word is unimportant, but more that we need to step back as you said and take a look at how, "it fits within the larger context of the story...and helps to show us how this one story is just one piece of the larger puzzle that the Bible teaches us about our Great Redeemer'. Then we can truly come to know our Savior more intimately...with a spirit of worship. Thank you Trev.
ReplyDelete