Never read a Bible verse. That's right, never read a Bible verse. Instead, always read a paragraph at least. (str.org)That's one of the best pieces of advice you can ever get when it comes to reading the Bible. Many don't realize that, while the concepts of chapters and verses are useful tools to reference scriptures, they are not part of the original inspired canon. In fact the Bible didn't even have verses until around the 15th or 16th century. (You can learn more about that on wikipedia).
So why can isolated bible verses be a bad thing? Consider what would happen if you tried to read any other form of communication in the same way as many read the Bible. Imagine if you for instance would divide this blog post into different units, each consisting of one or two sentences. And then in stead of reading it through from beginning to end would randomly select a sentence from it to read whenever you felt so inclined. Do you think you'd ever come to know what I was actually trying to communicate to you?
Yet that is how many read their Bibles. They'll pick verses here and there and view them as an isolated unit. Each verse is completely detached from its context and interpreted merely on its own. In stead of letting the text of scripture explain itself, they might pray about it or meditate on the verse, and then settle for some arbitrary interpretation that they feel God has shown them. They even regard this as the more spiritual approach to the Bible since they imagine it must involve close interaction with the Holy Spirit. Yet at they same time they might be unsettled about the amount of contradictions they seem to be finding in the Bible.
So we've studied the piece. Now what? Well, one approach would be to select a handful of puzzle pieces that you think are particularly beautiful. The ones that "speak to you". And then put the rest of the puzzle back in the box before you lay out your pieces in different patterns until you "have a peace about it". And behold, there's your picture of God. It's a rather small one, and not quite rational. The pieces don't seem to fit very well together. But perhaps you see that as beautiful in itself. Like in a postmodern piece of art, the impossibilities and unintelligibility of it is a part of the artwork. And it allows you the luxury of interpreting it any way you want. After all, nobody can speak authoritatively of the meaning of a picture like that.
Then there's another approach. But few chose it, because it involves a lot of hard work, and the result isn't really open for interpretation. You don't get to put the plain or gray or dark colored pieces back in the box to devote your attention to the pretty and colorful ones. No piece can be left out. You don't merely study the pieces on their own, but you study other pieces that look like it, and find which ones go together, and which ones go in a different portion of the puzzle. There's no other way around it than to say it's a tedious task.
Yet shortly into the puzzle you start to see details emerging. Beautiful things, that you would never have gathered from staring at the individual pieces. You start to see that even the boring pieces when seen together forms a picture of beauty beyond what you could have ever imagined. And for each piece you put in you see a fuller picture of the glory of God. And have greater and greater assurance that once the last piece is in there that glory will be enough to keep you occupied for all eternity. This is how you should read the Bible. Not a piece here and a piece there, but paragraphs, chapters and books seen together. That's how you come to truly know what God is like.
Posts
