How Should I Read the Bible?

The Jewish and Christian Scriptures are thoroughly unique pieces of literature. Although we can find features found in other works, such as Ancient Near East treaties, Greek epistles, and Semitic poetry, the totality of the work is really quite unlike anything else that exists. Sixty-six books written by some 40 authors from different languages, geographies, and cultural settings, "collaborating" over 1500 years on a masterpiece that has a unified message, surviving all attempts to eradicate it.

So, how should I approach such literature? What an undertaking!

First, we always want to be aware of our genre, or literary style of writing. The Bible is not just one style of writing - there's narrative, poetry, prophecy, apocalyptic, legal, didactic (teaching), and sometimes a mix. It's important to know what basic style of literature you're reading in order to understand fully what you're reading.

For example, David says in Psalm 76:2 that God's "dwelling place" is in Zion. If this were narrative, then we would take that as a literal statement - God has an address, and it includes "Zion" and a zip code. But the psalms are poetry, which employs lots of figurative language. God's "dwelling" is not an address. Rather, this means that His attention, His people, His concern, His Word, and His activity are centered in Zion. Yes, His Shekinah glory dwells in the Holy of Holies, but David is not waxing poetic merely about God's address. He's poetically conveying something far more important.

Second, we want to be aware of our intentions. We need to know about the text we are reading, but we also need to know about the one doing the reading (namely, us). Am I wanting to learn history? Then that determines not only what parts to read, but what specifics to pay attention to. Do I want to learn facts or do I want to study the Christian worldview (a way of looking at all of life)? Do I want to be taught what is good or how to do something? Perhaps I turn to Scripture to find out the nature of something (such as sin or the human condition). Often, we turn to Scripture for something affective rather than academic - we want a reason to hope, we're looking for comfort in troubled times, we need assurance of God's reliable character, and so on. What we're looking for determines how and what to read.

But there's one more crucial reason to read Scripture, but it's harder to describe. Let me start with a couple of illustrations.

One of my brothers is an attorney, and he often would say something like, "You don't go to Law School to learn the law. You go to Law School to learn to think like an attorney." His point is that Law School is not about trying to digest all the facts about every law (although, there is certainly plenty of that going on!). Rather, the process of Law School over time trains the student to mentally process situations and facts in a very attorney-like way. An attorney reaches his goals through a different mental process than would an engineer or a songwriter.

When I was in undergraduate school, I took most of my electives out of the math department - I couldn't get enough. I knew a lot of students who spent a lot of time memorizing formulas and step-by-step methods. I was no good at memorizing, but I loved the theory, so I stayed with that. Instead of memorizing, I learned to think more like a mathematician. So, on an exam, in order to arrive at the answers, I was doing less recall and more processing the problem from a theoretical standpoint. I didn't memorize the proofs - I would re-prove them from theory during the exam, then use that to answer the question. I wasn't always among the first to finish, but I usually did pretty well.

That's one of the most important reasons to read Scripture, to read it daily, to read it both with a quick broad sweep and a slow, investigative dig: to learn to think as God thinks. More than a list of facts and commands to keep track of, if we can eventually just change the way we think, to think more the way God does, then we'll understand Him and His creation all the more. We won't have to remember what things to do and how to do them; rather, we'll just do right things because we've begun to think like God more.

We'll never be able to completely think as God does, of course. He's got a bit more on His mind than we can handle! But, we can certainly begin to think more and more as He does. The Bible, then, becomes a cognitive training tool, like Law School or the math department, changing how we think our way through life.