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The Wrong Way to Read the Bible

Charlotte, my oldest kiddo, had avoided J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series for most of her elementary years—maybe just because of the overabundance of “Harrys and Hermiones” who filled her school’s annual storybook parade. But over the summer before her fourth grade, her tune changed, and she devoured all seven books and 4,100-plus pages in three months. She’d say she also read the script of the Broadway play too, but I don’t think that counts. This started a domino effect, and while we went slower with our two younger kids—the books get dark!—Harry and Co. became the Connellys’ constant companions over the following years.

Sometimes after that first summer, I saw Charlotte with one of the series paperbacks in hand, while the next day she had a different one. She’s a fast reader, but that seemed really quick. After a few times, I asked her how she was reading so quickly. “Oh,” she explained, laughing at my obvious ignorance. “I’m not reading the whole book. I just go back and read the parts I like.” Now, as a writer, a lover of good stories, and a guy who appreciates the craft of literature, her comment birthed immediate indignation in me: “You can’t read a book that way!” That was my first, sudden thought: the series is one long but unified story, meant to be read as such. It has ups and downs, twists and turns, and heroes, each perfectly crafted and painstakingly placed by the author.

On the heels of that first thought was a second startling realization: Most followers of Jesus read the Bible the way Charlotte reads Harry Potter. We just go back and read the parts we like, or jump to verses we feel might apply to something in our lives today. We reread the stories we know, memorize a few verses that’ll be inspirational, or ignore parts that are confusing.

In things like this, we miss large and valuable parts of the Bible, even if they are parts we don’t like or understand. We might not ever discover new verses that “apply to my life today,” as we like to say, because we never come across them! More deeply, though, we miss the long-but-unified story with its ups and downs, twists and turns, and true hero; each perfectly inspired by God and scribed by an intentional, human author.

This type of Bible reading stands in contrast to, say, the apostle Paul’s example to the church at Ephesus. Before leaving Ephesus to continue God’s mission in another place, he claimed, “I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). The goal of this brief plan is to help us rediscover a right way of reading the Bible — but it starts with asking ourselves how we read it: do we read only the parts we know and like, like my daughter read Harry Potter that summer? Or do we pursue a holistic understanding of God’s words, by reading new, regular, and even confusing, parts of the Bible, by paying attention to all of it?

Questions:

1. How do you most often read the Bible
2. What is the danger in reading only "little bits" of the Bible?