Christchurch Parish News, September 2015
Five suggestions to help us with reading the Bible.
Do you remember learning to read? Perhaps you do. For my part, I have absolutely no memory of learning how to do it. But many of the memories I do have of when I was young take for granted that I already knew how to read. For example, I can still recall sitting in front of the fire, one dank, Oxford winter, at a relatively early age, reading James and the Giant Peach from start to finish, all in one day; Roald Dahl’s story rendering me oblivious to the passing hours.
But it obviously wasn’t always the case that I was able to read and in my family, the story goes that it was my sister, some eight years older than me, who taught me how to do it. Using the Ladybird books, she would sit patiently with me sounding out the words until finally the connection between the squiggles on the page, the sounds in my mouth and the images in my head clicked and formed a whole. And then I was off, the basic skill developing quickly with lots of practice and encouragement.
Then as I grew older, and this I do remember, the nature of that encouragement began to change. I was told that now I was growing up, I should learn to read silently; ‘Read it in your head’ became the command. And in due course, ‘Stop moving your lips as you read’. All of which was to say that if you were a competent, more mature reader, then reading was something that happened inside your head and that you did it by yourself. What had started as a sociable activity with my sister by my side, underscored by bedtime stories etc., soon became a solitary one.
I mention this because when as Christians, we’re encouraged to read our Bibles, almost all of the social conditioning in our culture has shaped us to think that were we to undertake this activity, then it would be something we would automatically do by ourselves, alone. Yet for a very simple reason, this has almost always been the exception rather than the rule.
The reason for that is that the vast majority of Christians over the the last 2000 years have simply not been able to read. They would have been functionally illiterate. As you know, general education of the population is a very recent societal innovation and remains to this day somewhat patchy; in our country, it only dates back to the 19th century. So during the previous many centuries, whilst many Christians would have been able to recognise a few written words needed for everyday living, the notion of being able to read all of Paul’s letter to the Romans or the gospel according to John would have been something that lay well beyond their abilities. For most, the normal experience of Holy Scripture would have been an aural, communal one, when they heard it read out loud by someone who could read competently, whilst everyone was sitting all together, gathered for an act of corporate worship.
All of this matters hugely. Why? Because even though we’re one of the few generations of Christians where the laity has the necessary reading skills, the vast majority of us find reading our Bibles a challenge. We know that we’re meant to read them. And we feel guilty that we don’t. We may even have picked up along the way that the reason why it’s so important to read them is because the Scriptures are God’s primary way of speaking to us. And yet, and yet … We still find ourselves reluctant to do it and find all sorts of ingenious ways of avoiding having to do it, be it by remembering that pile of ironing that needs doing, or that the lawn’s in need of a good mow, or just by going on Facebook and seeing what our friends have been up to in the last half-hour. If we fancy ourselves as being particularly spiritual, over time, we may find ourselves developing the habit of reading lots of books about the Bible by people who have actually gone to the trouble of reading it closely, thereby saving us the hassle of having to read the Bible for ourselves! Don’t get me wrong, reading devotionals or reflections, even weighty theological tomes, can all play their role in our pilgrimage of faith. But none of them are a substitute for reading the actual Scriptures themselves. Deep down, we all know that. But still, most of us just don’t pick the Bible up and start reading. And in our reluctance to do so, we feel that we’re on our own.
So what are we going to do about it? Here are five suggestions to get the ball rolling. Some of these may be already familiar to you, but hopefully not all.
1. Pray
Our sense of being on our own in this endeavour can be immediately addressed by praying. We never read the Bible on our own, even when we’re sitting by ourselves, for we are always in the presence of God. But here we immediately hit a Catch-22. We may feel utterly dislocated from the presence of God and so praying to God to give us the desire to read the Bible may be the last thing we feel like doing; the irony being of course that down the centuries the experience of Christians before us has been that the very act of reading the Scriptures, or hearing them read, is likely to diminish this sense of dislocation and distance from God that is discouraging us in the first place. In this scenario, the best approach is one of honesty. There’s no point getting all pious and formulating a few words into what we think is some sort of appropriate God-talk that sounds good (who are we trying to kid anyway?). If we feel disconnected and unmotivated, then let that be the prayer. Something like, ‘I’m not in the mood and, frankly, I’m finding the prospect boring. But apparently if I read some of this, that might change. Amen.’ So prayer first, then read.
2. Don’t start at the beginning
You may have read none of it. You may have read it back to back years ago in your more ardent youth. But now, if you start at the beginning of the Bible, your head’s going to start spinning very quickly. Even if you make it as far as the story of Joseph in the second half of Genesis, by the time you’re a fair way into Exodus, whatever initial enthusiasm or not you may have is going to start to wain, and wain quickly. It gets pretty heavy going, especially by the time you get to Leviticus and all the laws that it lists. I’m not saying those books don’t matter. Of course they do. But what we’re trying to do here is to cultivate a habit of reading that remains part of our lives through thick and thin. Better instead to start with one of the gospels. We are Christians and so for us Jesus is the primary revelation of God. So it makes sense to start with one of the texts that has Jesus as its explicit focus from beginning to end. But which one? After all there are four gospel accounts: one according to Mark, one according to Luke, one according to Matthew and one according to John. Which one to go for? Mark’s the shortest. Luke and Matthew have much in common with each other and with Mark. But John is very different in style: for example, Jesus speaks in the long monologues whereas in Mark, Luke and Matthew his manner of speaking is much pithier with a heavy focus on parables (don’t let such differences worry you; they are four different accounts of the gospel and so we should expect them to vary according to the different writers’ intentions). My recommendation is normally to start with either Mark or Luke. Mark throws you in at the deep end and it’s a breathless narrative until it reaches its sudden end. Luke, on the other hand, is in some ways like a modern documentary, where the journalist sifts through his sources and weaves together a reliable testimony of events. It may be, of course, that you already have a favourite gospel account. In which case, don’t let that become your go-to gospel all the time. For example, if you prefer the gospel according to John, make sure you take time to read Matthew. The compilers of what we call the New Testament deliberately chose for there to be four accounts, so it makes sense to respect that decision and over time give them all due attention.
3. Sometimes a sherry, sometimes a pint
Tom Wright writes somewhere (sorry, I can’t remember where) about the difference between reading Scripture as if it were a glass of sherry (so, in small quantities, in theory!) and a pint of beer, where you take big long gulps. He likens our readings in church on a Sunday to sherry readings and private readings to being more like swigging beer (like all good metaphors, it breaks down eventually!). However, feeling that we have to read Scripture in large chunks will simply put us off as we’ll always be able to say, I simply haven’t got the time. So, instead, just like with learning to run, small distances at first are best. Having chosen which gospel account you’re going to read, commit to reading just one chapter a day. But don’t be silly about it. If you want to read more because it’s exciting (and it is), then keep going. People who know about these things say that it takes about 30 days to cultivate a new habit. So if you’ve chosen Luke, by the time you’ve read all 24 chapters, you’re nearly there.
4. Shhh!
Having prayed, however tentatively, and read a chapter of whichever gospel account you’ve chosen, try not to spring out of your chair as if you’re at school and the bell’s just rung signalling the end of the lesson. Instead give yourself a moment. It doesn’t have to be longer than a couple of minutes and let the passage you’ve read resonate within you. Think of yourself as an echo chamber. Give the Scriptures a chance to echo and reverberate within you. If you rush off straight away, then there are soon going to be all sorts of other sounds and noises buzzing around inside you which will distract you and you’ll forget what it was you just read and what jumped out at you. We need to give ourselves a moment to let the words we’ve just read resonate within us. Sitting silently like this after reading Scripture is actually a form of prayer. Just let the images from what you’ve read come and watch them go and then see the new ones take their place. Be attentive to them. Before you know it, more than a couple of minutes will have passed and you’re time is up.
5. Read together
Finally, having decided which gospel account you’re going to read, try and see if there’s someone you could read it with. That doesn’t have to mean that you read it physically sitting side by side, although that would be great. Rather, just as with a book club, reading the Bible whilst knowing that you’re going to meet up with someone for a coffee and share how you got on, helps to keep you on track. It also reminds you that these writings were the product of and intended for the church. And the church is not one person. It’s us! The benefit of course also is that you then get to hear the other person’s take on what you’ve been reading (very much like the Priory Bible Study). For example, the passage you found tricky and couldn’t make head or tail of, your friend has an interesting angle on, which opens it up for you, and vice versa.
All of which brings us back to the beginning. We learn to read the Scriptures together. They weren’t written with the aim of being tricky or incomprehensible, and whilst parts of them can be less than obvious, let’s approach them with confidence and hear what they have to say to us when we read them together. And then let’s see what happens.