Overcoming the Monotony of Scripture Reading

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]


Midweek Encounter 1.29.15
Overcoming the Monotony of Scripture Reading (are we allowed to say that?)

Have you ever watched a movie so many times that you have most or all of the dialogue memorized? Or perhaps you've read a book over and over or listened to a song so often that you can sing all the lyrics...and all of the riffs and percussion parts as well. Or maybe, like me, you thought you knew all the lyrics to the new Taylor Swift song but then learned, much to your disappointment, that it has nothing to do with Starbucks at all.

When you ask people about why they read and re-read and re-re-read Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, they often reply that every time they read the familiar stories again, they notice something new—subtle foreshadowing that they had missed before, or the beauty of the author’s word choice and arrangement. Or maybe they tell you that they find comfort in the familiarity of fictional characters or places they have come to love.

And while it’s easy to find literature fanatics, it can be a little harder to find Bible fanatics.

I have many friends who will excitedly share with me the plot of the book they’re reading or the show they’re watching, but I haven’t had many people rushing over to tell me the story of Naaman lately. Actually, the only person who tells me Bible stories with regularity is my daughter, Lily. She’s 4, and she loves to hear and tell stories. But already last Sunday, as we chatted over lunch, she told me that she learned the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well “again”. Again? She’s only 4. She didn’t say it in a way to suggest that she didn’t want to hear it again; rather, her tone indicated that she had already learned that story so she was ready to move on and learn the next one.

I think that’s my problem with reading the Bible. I’ve discovered that if I think I already think I know the story pretty well, I’ll just skim through it without looking for an actionable lesson or a change of heart. I’m not alone in this sentiment, luckily, because there is a fairly large body of literature written about reading the Bible well. In his preface to the book Eat This Book, Eugene Petersen writes, “But as it turns out, in this business of living the Christian life, ranking high among the most neglected aspects is one of having to do with the reading of the Christian Scriptures. Not that Christians don’t own and read their Bibles. And not that Christians don’t believe that their Bibles are the word of God. What is neglected is reading the Scriptures formatively, reading in order to live.” This is certainly true of my Bible reading. I don’t expect that there is something formative and exciting to be found, and I tend to read each passage as if it’s disconnected from the rest of the Bible. I happen to be an English teacher and I’m always asking kids to make connections across texts and within a text, but I rarely do that when I read the Bible, even though there may be no other work containing such profound foreshadowing or such masterfully metaphorical and allegorical stories and characters.

Petersen, near the end of his preface, makes this suggestion for reading the Scriptures intentionally: “What I want to say…is that in order to read the Scriptures adequately and accurately, it is necessary at the same time to live them. Not to live them as a prerequisite to reading them, and not to live them in consequence of reading them, but to live them as we read them…” Reading the Bible actively is hard, especially if the names and places are unfamiliar or if the stories seem entirely too familiar. But when we read as Petersen suggests—with the intention of living out each day’s readings—it adds purpose and function to a habit or discipline that can feel stale or odd or purposeless.



[Kristin vanEyk lives in Kentwood, MI where she attends Encounter Church with her husband Dirk, and two kids, Lily and Colin. Kristin teaches high school English and otherwise passes the time reading, writing, running, and enjoying all that Michigan's West Coast has to offer.]