Puzzled about how to understand the Bible, sometimes we shrink back from reading at all.  But the more we read, the more we read.  And Mark Twain was right:  "It's not the portions of Scripture I don't understand that trouble me; it's the parts I do understand."  And there are enough of them to keep us busy for a lifetime.

   But where to start? and how to proceed?  Buy a good study Bible, with footnotes, maps, charts, explanatory sidebars.  Follow the Sunday morning readings during the week.  And join a group (like Disciple); we need each other to stay on track and read more deeply.

   As children we may (and should!) learn a handful of Bible verses.  But the Bible was not divvied up into little verse snippets until many centuries had passed - and mature readers are far too wise to zero in on just one little phrase, which can miss the point entirely.  Expecting too much from a single verse is like yanking a thread out of a huge tapestry:  the unraveled thread means nothing until we back up, and marvel at the big picture in which it finds its crucial but modest place.

   When we read, we are not rifling through a thick tome of legal statutes or statistical tables.  The book is personal, and profoundly so.  The fabric of the Bible turns out to be the "swaddling clothes in which Christ is laid" (Martin Luther).  Or, in our reading we put on "corrective lenses" (John Calvin) to cure our spiritual astigmatism.  Something personal happens, and nothing is the same.

   The Bible's patient labor is to "comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable."  We think of the Bible as "news," so we read expecting to be startled - not hunting for extra throw-pillows to wedge around our pet biases of thought, or to prop up the lifestyle we've crafted for our self-indulgence.  Stuck behind me in my office is a Charles Schulz cartoon where a young man, engrossed in his Bible, says to a friend, "Don't bother me now: I'm looking for a verse of Scripture to back up one of my preconceived notions."

   Read with your mind slightly ajar, and your mental map of up and down, what is valued and avoided, and which way to go will be crumpled up - which is good.  No matter how deftly we can maneuver around in this world, we were made for something higher, and a nagging hollowness will forever dog us until we dig into the Bible and become intimately acquainted with Jesus who is swaddled there, until we wear the spectacles and see ourselves, the world and God clearly.  We explore the admittedly strange world of Scripture, but as we find our way, we discover there our one true home.  But only if we read...

James
james@mpumc.org

Two excellent study Bibles are the HarperCollins and the NIVStudy.

The complete email series on Bible Questions can be found if you click here.

Coming up: 
eBibleQuestions8 - Why bother with the Old Testament?
eBibleQuestions9 - What about Creation and Evolution?
eBibleQuestions10 - Who invented the idea of Original Sin?
eBibleQuestions11 - Why would Israel be God's Chosen People?