The other day an acquaintance approached me saying, “Doug, I’ve been reading my bible more lately but it’s not making much sense to me.” This is not an uncommon frustration. More than a few have shared it. After all, scripture can be intimidating.
A root problem lies in how we read scripture. Scripture is unique among literature. It warrants its own approach in reading. You don’t read Scripture as you would The Dallas Morning News or H.G. Well’s “The Outline of History” or the works of Shakespeare.
In Eat This Book, Eugene Peterson contends,
There is only one way of reading that is congruent with our holy scriptures, writing that trusts in the power of words to penetrate our lives and create truth and beauty and goodness, writing that requires a reader who, in the words of Rainer Maria Wilke, “Does not always remain bent over his pages; he often leans back and closes his eyes over a line he has been reading again, and its meaning spreads through his blood.”
He would go on to suggest that this particular kind of reading is one “that enters our souls as food enters our stomachs, spreads through the blood, and becomes holiness and love and wisdom.”
Fundamentally, there is a difference between reading for information and transformation. Atheists frequently read the bible for information, but people of God read it for transformation. Through truth God shapes, forms, and molds us “into his workmanship” (Eph. 2:10). But this only happens when we are receptive to the truth (Jam. 1:21) and willing to be clay in the potter’s hands (Jer. 18:6).
