A Defective Christian Reads Her Bible

One of my "Lenten resolutions" was to read my Bible daily. This reading-my-Bible thing has been a continual hindrance to my personal perfection. As anyone who has grown up in fundamentalist/evangelical circles knows, reading your Bible is expected of all good Christians. My childhood Baptist church went so far as to make it one of several signs of salvation: you know you’re saved if you have a new desire to read Scripture. Seeing as I found the Bible terribly dull, I concluded that I was a defective Christian.

It didn’t help when, in later years under later teachers, the Bible became a mere book of "principles," which further dried out an already dull read. And then I was expected to "glean insights" from the text, to find out what it said to me. Perhaps not surprisingly, it never said anything nice to defective Christians.

Then I married a man who truly loved the Scriptures. He admired Paul’s writings, he loved the book of Job, and he enjoyed reading the Psalms. I was frankly puzzled. Darren never pressured me to "get into the Word," and fortunately never tried to get the Word into me by reading it to me. With his gentle example, and other changes in my heart and mind, I eventually gathered up courage to open my Bible again.

It was still dull reading. Even after a year of consistent reading and journaling, I still didn’t see the point. The words echoed in my head, and I filled up notebook pages with what I thought about them, but I knew that what I thought wasn’t necessarily right. The only discernable benefit I reaped from that year was that I gained the confidence that if I missed a day, or a week, of reading, I was still admitted to God’s presence through Jesus – without having a red "defective" sticker slapped to my spiritual back. To be sure, it was worth a year of trudgery to get to that realization.

But here came Lent again, and I again resolved to Read My Bible. My pastor – who also never slapped that sticker on my back – assured me that God would lead me to whatever I should read. He’s more of a charismatic than I am; I figured that since Darren had preached just the past Sunday on I Corinthians 13, the Love Chapter, I should start with that.

At first, I did it just the way I was taught to do it. I snatched a few minutes during the day for a "quiet time" alone with God, with the usual feelings of boredom and frustration. Within three days, I was back to my usual oops-I-forgot-guess-I’ll-read-before-bed routine. That turned out to be a very happy mistake. Since I’m dispositionally incapable of reading anything without commenting on it, I mentioned something to Darren about I Corinthians 14 (spiritual gifts). Darren, of course, can answer Bible questions with, "Well, some theologians think this, but others say this, and historically the Church has said..." We spent the next fifteen minutes discussing the question. The next night, I found another bit to remark on, and Darren explained that I Corinthians was written as a letter in response to a letter that is now lost, and we lamented the fact that the first letter was lost. And so it went, every night or so. And for the first time, I think: maybe I'm not defective. At least I am enjoying my Bible reading now.

In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense. I don’t even like watching movies by myself; why would I enjoy reading something as important as Scripture entirely alone? I love having Darren to exchange ideas with, to expostulate and laugh with. Furthermore, I now understand more about how this book of the Bible was written, why it was written, and what great Christians of the past have thought about it (all courtesy of my well-informed husband, of course). With this knowledge behind my reading, I now can understand better what God does say to me, without having to force "insights" from the text.

After Lent is over, I’ll probably let my Bible drop to the wayside again, from sheer force of habit if nothing else. But I think I’ve caught a glimmering of the joy of Scripture. I think I’ll pick it back up sooner than usual. One day I might even use my Bible to scrape that self-applied sticker off my back.

-- SJ