Hello friends,
As you might have noticed, every month I post a Scripture reading plan for my local community. To my surprise, people from all over have adopted it—along with our five simple practices—to use in their homes, churches, and small groups. I’ve also slowly built a little link-library of helpful tips on prayer, fasting, church, and spiritual authority, which I include with each month’s reading plan. Last month, though, someone kindly pointed out that my “Scripture-reading” link was broken. I don’t know what happened to it, but I’ve gone ahead and created a new and improved version here. Needless to say, this is not an exhaustive guide to Bible-reading. It’s not really a guide at all. Just three tips that have proved helpful to me over the years. I hope you find them helpful as well.
— Ross
1. Rumination Over Analysis
The online age is a world of cheap answers to cheap questions. You can “know” all kinds of things without knowing anything at all. As a boy (before Google and Chatgpt), I remember celebrating any time I came across a passage in the Bible I thought I was beginning to understand. And then I would ruminate on that little nugget of light for the rest of the day. “How can I use that key to unlock other doors in the Scriptures? How might that key unlock doors in my own life?” Etc. It helped me a lot.
Now that I’m a 40 year-old geezer, I tend to get more excited about the bits of Scripture I don’t understand. I’ll take those dark, mysterious passages where Jesus says something seemingly incomprehensible, or where two back-to-back stories in a Gospel reading seem to have nothing in common—e.g. “Why on earth did Matthew place this story next to that one?”—and I’ll chew on that, like Sherlock Holmes, for the rest of the day or the rest of the week.
Rumination is a major, though somewhat hidden, theme throughout Scripture. The suffering of many biblical figures (Adam and Eve included) is due, in no small part, to their failure to ruminate. Some truths can only be seen by waiting, trusting, and keeping your eyes on the seemingly invisible prize.
So, when you read, ruminate. Don’t settle for cheap answers to cheap questions. The deepest truths come to light when confusion and frustration help you to see that your initial questions weren’t deep enough. As your dad probably used to say, you get what you pay for. Ask dollar-store questions; get dollar-store answers. The modern world is in desperate need of more expensive questions. The Bible can teach you to ask such questions. And if you wait and trust and ruminate, you can become the kind of person who can afford expensive answers.
2. Images Over Words
A big breakthrough for me was realizing that the Bible is made up more of images than words. Through our modern lens, words tend to be more important. We like things to be precise and technical, so when we see a certain word recurring, we want to give it a precise and technical definition. “Justified…what does that mean?” [Google what the experts say.] “Oh, now I understand. Ok, sanctified…” [Repeat the process.]
Don’t get me wrong, you can learn good things that way. But ultimately, it won’t go deep enough. When Paul, for instance, uses the terms justification and sanctification, he’s not merely using technical terms. Justification is an image from the world of the law court. Sanctification is an image from the world of the temple. When he uses these terms, he doesn’t just want you to cognitively understand. He wants you to step into the picture he’s painting, to come into his world.
This is why Jesus speaks almost entirely in images or parables. Even the actions he takes—healing a blind man, feeding 5000, pulling a coin from the belly of a fish—are more like living parables (like the dramatic acts of the OT prophets) than mere factual occurrences. Once you see that, the Bible comes alive in a new way. Across the Old and New Testament, images hyperlink to each other far more effectively than mere words. As you learn to recognize the images, you begin to see the connections. To put it another way, the words on our Bible’s pages are simply not the words of the original text. They are translations from at least three different ancient languages, which are no longer fully accessible to us. Specific words and definitions may even be debated. But the images remain transcendent. The words are there to express the images, and the images are there to express realities that go far beyond words.
In a possibly apocryphal story, Hemingway was once asked how he managed to write so simply and briefly. His response was, “I would use no words if I could.” Hemingway didn’t want his readers to get caught up in the narration itself. He wanted them to feel like they were living in the pictures he presented. He wanted them to taste and see, not merely to define and understand. In this, I think he was accidentally imitating Jesus.
3. Participation Over All
As Evangelicals, we are fond of referring to the Bible as “the authoritative word of God.” By this we tend to mean that the Bible is without error or untruth. I, of course, agree that the Bible is 100% trustworthy and true. But the word “authoritative” has a much deeper meaning, which we sometimes forget: it means that we must obey it. You will not (cannot) understand the God of the Bible until you begin to do what he says. Every story, every poem and song, every divine command and declaration is meant to be applied to your life by means of participation in the kingdom it introduces. The Bible is meant to be lived. So, as you read it, begin to live it, and then you will begin to know what it means.
Thanks for reading. Now go read the Bible!
P.S. Surf camp has officially ended for the summer, and I can write again! My final installment of “On Moving Mountains” will be out soon. It’s almost finished. To those who have been faithfully reading along since last year, thank you for your patience. If you haven’t read them or want to be reminded, here are the first three installments:
I've been thinking about how the greatest modern enemy to our spiritual life is google/ chat GPT/ instagram carousels that give us a "plan" - essentially cheap answers that trick us into believing solutions come fast. But real, God given direction takes time and prayer and a different kind of seeking to reveal itself. Love how you articulated this!
Thanks for this, Ross!
It’s funny this popped into my feed, because an old mentor of mine pointed out how the rumination is built into the experience of reading the Bible. The wrestle is where the real stuff exists. It’s where roots grow.