How I read my Bible

“How I read my Bible…” a friend began  —  and then went on to “go off” on some other people. Certainly the Bible can give you plenty of verbiage to strew around the place if that is what you are seeking. Check out the Psalms: you won’t find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy  — this side of Mos Eisley. But then again you won’t find entire agreement that these sentiments are, well, right.

How I read my Bible began with precocious curiosity, as it did with an ancestor before me, a 19th Century free-thinking Ohioan named Sarah Marie who at a young age had carte blanche in the local public library. One day (to her parents’  — horror? bemusement?) she brought home a strange new book, the “Holly Bibble”. A good family story. 

How I read my Bible began, then, with opening that same book, if not the same copy. There was Aunt Carol’s copy, Gramps’s multiple copies, and eventually the one my teacher Lee Jagers gave me at a Young Life Bible study. 

By the time of that latter gift, a Phillips New Testament, I was no longer reading it alone. I was in a group, capably led, where the themes and meanings of Scripture texts were discussed. I may have changed some of my opinions and perceptions since then, but I have continued the practice. Read and discuss alone and in a group. But read to seek meaning. 

Read, not just to satisfy curiosity, though that is a good start. Read, not just to fulfill an assignment or prepare a lesson  — or a sermon, but read “sitting under the text” as my Seattle text-study leader cautioned us. Read to learn. Read to be refreshed. Read to understand or not understand. Read to be challenged. 

As the book itself says, numerous times, read to seek Wisdom. Wisdom with a capital “W” becomes, indeed, a course for the Spirit to follow. The Spirit is a wind that blows where it will, so, still, do not read it only alone: sit under the text as under a tree with broad shade, and bring your friends. And a few strangers too.

At the Church of the Beloved in Edmonds, Washington, we tried out a practice I first experienced in a small chapel in San Francisco, among a group in embryo there known as the Church of Saint Gregory of Nyssa: invite a stranger to read the Gospel aloud. You may hear it in new ways.

You may hear it as my friend did, back at the start of this story. As a way to wallop — but maybe, as you sit under the text, it will wallop you back.

JRL+

An edited version of this essay appeared in the Keeping the Faith feature in the Home + Life section of the Arizona Daily Star, December 12th 2021, on page E3, under the heading "Read the Bible to learn."