How I read the Bible

The bible can be a beguiling book, filled with ancient laws that seem to make no sense today. It can be confusing, containing language that seems to promote violence and a shocking lack of equality for anyone who wasn't Jewish and male. It's actually a library of books, from genres spanning from poetry to apocalyptic literature, epistles to prophecy. It stretches across thousands of years and the arc of its story is as expansive as the horizon.It contains the raw stories of people who were afraid and on the run. Its inglorious heroes are often a hot mess of contradictions. One moment, they're praising God and the next moment, they're sleeping with a smoking hot neighbor. The protagonist of the New Testament claimed to be the very epitome of God (that's what Son of God meant), yet he was friends with prostitutes and infamous sinners. He spent his time insisting that the Kingdom of God was available right now, to anyone who wanted it, regardless of class, gender, or even religion, so long as they trusted that it flowed through him. He grew up poor and died young, and he's still history's most beloved, most intriguing figure.So I read the story of God in the Scriptures. Most days, I read the lectionary texts for the given week, found in the Revised Common Lectionary. There are always four texts - the first is from the Hebrew Scriptures (also called the Old Testament), then a psalm, then a reading from the New Testament letters, and finally a gospel reading (from Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John).For me, the week begins on Monday, and that entire week, I read the readings for the following Sunday. I pick the one that most seems to resonate for me, and that's what I read that week. Click here to see this week's readings. If you don't have a readable bible, go here for a great online tool to read any passage in any number of translations (my favorite translation right now is The Voice). Or, check out the YouVersion Bible App on your smart phone (you can even listen to an audio version of any passage with a simple click if that's how you prefer to "read" the Scriptures).For example, this week, the psalm is Psalm 27. The writer is King David, and enemies surround him. Do you have any mounting anxiety? Any people who are out to get you? A mortgage that you're not sure is going to get paid this month? A child who seems hell bent to make your life miserable? A marriage that is disappointing or crumbling? A job that sucks the life out of you? An uncertain future?Then perhaps Psalm 27 should be your prayer book this week. Read it and see if it resonates.Now, some thoughts about reading the bible:1. I don't find it helpful to call it "The instruction manual for life." As others have pointed out, the only time I pull out an instruction manual is when things are broken and I'm trying to fix them myself. As my plumber will attest, this is when I tend to get myself and those I love into all kinds of trouble. Trying to fix life's great problems on our own generally doesn't go well, as the history of humankind spells out rather grotesquely at times. The bible is the story of really needy people getting rescued by God, over and over again. And you won't find the exact answer for where you should go to college or whom you should marry in the Scriptures. What you will find are rich and sometimes harrowing stories of how God's people made good and bad decisions as they tried to follow God in the midst of their actual lives.2. The story was always progressing towards something, so I view God through the lens of Jesus. There are so many confusing stories in both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. We might love their rich complexity and velvety layers of nuance, but for many of us, it can take us out when we read that God ordered the slaughter of an entire people group. So when I say the story is progressing towards something, I mean that it was always going somewhere. The story was always about God calling and gathering a people to reveal what God is really like, and then to bless the world (this is the calling that God gave Abram in Genesis 12). And mostly, the bible shows how God's people messed that calling up in about a million ways. So the story was always progressing towards Jesus, who showed up as the one true Israelite that finally fulfilled that calling. So when I have questions about who God is, I look at Jesus. At the end of the day, what is most true about God is that out of God's expansive and self sacrificing love for every human being who ever existed, God chose to hang on a cross in order to bring wholeness to the world, and because of that, tomorrow doesn't have to be a repeat of today. In my opinion, the most beautiful truth found in the Scriptures is that God is Christ like.3. We're at our best when we find ourselves in the story. When you read the story of Jonah rotting away in the belly of the fish for three days, one response is incredulity. Are we really supposed to believe that a man was swallowed by a fish, hung out there for three days praying desperate prayers, and then was finally spit out onto dry land? But another way to read it is to reflect on the times of our lives when all was dark, and when we seemed to be swallowed up by fear. We all spend time in the belly; it is a universal experience. Or when Jesus was in the garden, sweating drops of blood. Really, we ask? He really sweat drops of blood? But have you ever agonized with God over what you should do? Have you ever wept bitter tears of disappointment and betrayal? How did that feel? When you allow yourself to enter into the story, it can be transformative, and not merely informative. And when we read the Scriptures for transformation and not merely for information, we stop simply reading about the story; we find ourselves in the story instead.That's probably enough for today. Thoughts, comments, questions?