I think our culture today is somewhat anti-reading. Not completely, and not overtly, but there are so many other things vying for our attention. The attention span of the reader version of you is about three minutes, whereas the attention span of the radio you is more like 15 minutes and the television version even longer. A book has to capture you in something like thirty seconds before you look to something else. And I think this is why reading the bible has chiefly become a chore for us Gen Y’ers. We know that reading the bible is important, so we slug and chug our way through it, clinging mainly to the easy stuff, maybe James, Ephesians or one of the gospels. We dare not hit Job or Lamentations, or try and understand the seemingly complex theology in Romans or 1st Corinthians. We have lost the beauty in the written word, or the desire for it, and along with it we lose the opportunity to know and understand God more.
We can often get tempted to see the bible as a whole stack of chapters and versus stuck together, with boring chapters separating the better ones. I was watching a documentary on Evangelical American Christianity one day by some journalist, I can’t remember who. He talked about how this branch of Christianity sees the bible as the inspired word of God, which of course it is. But then he talked about how evangelicals take pride in quoting scripture and verse, telling crowds or friends or whoever is listening what their promise for the day is, or what spiritual insight they might conclude from the scripture they are quoting. Reciting scriptures becomes bases for theological arguments, scriptures quoted from both sides to try and prove whatever they want to prove.
I think too many of us only know the ‘quote-me’ scriptures and not enough of us know stories, not enough of us have taken time to understand the bigger picture of the bible. A book yes inspired by God with plenty of truth and morality in it, but also a book of God’s love affair with His creation, His acts of redemption, His stories of faithfulness, true tales of justice and righteousness.
I think a lot of us are unable to fall in love with the bible because we are unable to fall in love with reading. Of course, people who are completely unable to read can still love Jesus with everything they have and can be true in that love too. I’m not suggesting that. I guess as I’m reading the bible now, I’m really starting to see the beauty of it, and the care God took in writing it all. And I wonder whether we, as people, have made reading it somewhat a chore, or have made the practice the same as like reading a manual to some high-Tec piece of machinery.
Considering invested love for the written word can lend itself to falling in love with Jesus even more. I guess that’s where I have found myself over the last couple of weeks, and I thought I should share it with you. Because when God created the bible for us, He didn’t just create a book, He created something intensely personal.
It’s just that, to receive it, you have to read it.
Hence the title to this post.
