Erasing biblical aliteracy?
Aliterate people lack the desire to read. They can read (and thus are not illiterate ), but they just don’t.
Not sure what the statistics are on reading habits after high school but I doubt they are very encouraging in our society. People do many things enthusiastically, but not many people are readers as they get older. The exact opposite happened to me. I read a handful of books to get through high school, and then Christ arrested my heart and I quickly developed a voracious appetite for reading. (Still slowly though.)
At least 4/5 homes in America have a Bible, yet a small fraction of people actually dust off one of their many copies and read it. Why? We prioritize what we value. True knowledge of God is not valued. We tend to enamored with the latest and greatest fad, looking for a quick fix, while God’s timeless truth would bring the satisfaction and depth our souls crave (and were created to enjoy). We must fight, swim upstream, and with Him develop a love of Christ and His Word.
Last night our class kicked off — Enjoying the Bible for All Its Worth . I was deeply encouraged by the appetite of the 50 or so adults who came. They ate it up; we covered everything I hoped, and had more interaction than expected. It was a thoroughly enjoyable time for me as their teacher.
In fact, joy was the first thing we discussed: Enjoyment is not optional . Enjoying God. Enjoying the Bible. These are commands sustained by God’s good pleasure in fulfilling them in us. All of the Scripture points us to see Jesus the Christ as the most compelling and worthy Person in all the Universe — to value Him through delight. And it makes sense, since He created us to do just that.
At the start of the second hour I opened the floor, asking "What challenges do we face in reading and understanding the Bible?" Some candid answers from the class:
- not knowing where to start
- no pictures! (actually, most words in the original languages are in fact word pictures!)
- how does it all fit together — why is it not organized chronologically (specifically the OT)?
- pronouncing names (genealogies) and dealing with strange geography
- I fall asleep face down in my Bible at night
- psyche up myself to commit to reading, only to fail in consistency
- it’s boring
I added a few of my own:
- we don’t understand it
- the Bible says things we don’t like
- it takes time + work — we’re lazy!
Then I kindly pronounced all of these bogus . That is, each can be overcome, and God wills that we work with Him in valuing Him and His Word above all else. Have you specifically asked Him to conquer these tiny obstacles in you?
Speaking of joy, their assignment for next Tuesday night is to read Philippians (a letter all about joy) and first seek to grasp the "big idea" of Paul’s inspired epistle. We talked about how this course will help us develop in us the science and art of understanding Scripture and bringing it into our daily lives. It is hard work. We must sit and think and pray. But doesn’t anything worth doing take hard work? We are not alone in the process. God’s Spirit meets with us, shining the light of truth and significance on the passage.
So, fear not, we can make some early mistakes in our hermeneutics, seeking to correct one another gently. We can learn by diligence and humility how to rightly find out what the texts says and means, and how it applies to us today. That way we will all enjoy the Bible together, for all its worth.
For God’s glory and our joy, we get to work at erasing biblical aliteracy one God-loving believer at a time. Fifty of us are catching on.
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