How To Read the Bible

Whether it’s Shakespeare, Tolkien, Kipling, or Alice Walker, the path to fully engaging with their writings is to understand the context: the history behind their stories, the times in which they were written, and the type of literature they used.

The same is true with the Bible.

Far too often the Bible has been misused, misunderstood, dismissed, condemned, or ridiculed because it has not been read as the Bible wants to be read.

Part of reading the Bible as it wants to be read is to understand what the Bible is not and what the Bible is.

As we read the Bible we want to keep in mind that the Bible is not:

  • A self-help book, although there are many great life-insights in the Bible

  • A rule book with guaranteed rules to follow for a successful life

  • An answer to every question book, although it does wrestle with the big questions of life

  • A life-manual, although it can certainly be useful for living

The Bible, at its core, is a human-divine story. (Check out this great line from the Netflix Film: A Boy Called Christmas: The Universe is made up of stories, not atoms.)

It’s human in that the story is rooted in the human experience. It tells stories about:

  • Who we are

  • How we came to be

  • Why we are the way we are

  • How we disfigured our humanity

  • What our purpose is

It’s divine in that God enters into the human story to reveal God’s self to us. The Bible is:

  • The story of God’s passionate drive to claim us, shape us and guide us with his love and grace

  • The story of the radical nature of God’s love for us

  • The story of the depths to which God will go to capture us with that love

The Bible is filled with stories about God reaching out to humanity with grace, in real human settings, seen through the lens of the context, history, and world-view and language of real human beings. As the story moves through history, humanity’s understanding of God grows and evolves.

The Bible was written by human beings in a particular context and setting. But somehow their words have life in them—life breathed into them by the Spirit of God. These are not dead words or old stories. These are ancient stories that still speak life to us thousands of years later.

To read the Bible is to interpret the Bible. No one can read it without trying to discern its meaning. So, if we want to read the Bible as the Bible wants to be read—if, regardless of our belief about God or Jesus, we want to understand this unique story—then the following principles can guide us.

1) Start with the context:

  • When was it written?

  • To whom was it written?

  • What was their understanding of the world?

  • What did this passage/story mean to them in their time in their world?

  • Why is the story there?

  • What questions/issues is it dealing with?

Context matters.

I received the following email from one of the members of my congregation:

I was taking a systematic theology course and about the second session we started getting into "creation." I raised my hand and said, "So, Professor, cut to the chase for a minute. Do you believe the account in Genesis is true?"

He replied, "Well, Tom, you're going to have to learn to ask better questions."

I thought that was rude, but he went on to explain that we could argue that question both ways for the rest of the semester and never get anywhere. Then he said, "Isn't it a better question to ask: What is there in the stories we find in Genesis that were so powerful to the emerging people of Israel that they preserved them virtually verbatim for centuries and then wrote them down when doing so was still very difficult, expensive, and time consuming? Why were they so important, and what does that say about their relationship with God? Isn't that a much more useful question?"

2) Understand the genre or literary type of literature

The Bible, a “library” of 66 books, is made up of a variety of genres or literary styles: Poetry, History, Parable, Gospel, to name a few. All of them need to be read in the context of their literary style.

We don’t read Harry Potter the same way we would read a biography of Abraham Lincoln. We don’t read poetry the way we would read the newspaper.

Genre matters.

For example, in describing a time of great joy Isaiah says:

For you shall go out in joy,
    and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
    shall burst into song,
    and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. (Isaiah 55:12)

If we say we take the Bible literally, then we have to believe that at some point mountains and hills will grow the capacity to break out in song and that trees will grow human arms and hands so they can clap along.

Or, we can literally believe the truth behind the metaphor—that someday all of creation will be renewed under the compassionate rule of God. And that will bring about a world-wide celebration.

Genre matters.

3) Apply it to today:

The Bible was not written to us, but it is written for us.

Once we have context and genre down, we can then ask the question: What is this passage/story/poem/history, saying to us today?

4) Let Scripture interpret Scripture:

The Bible is remarkably consistent in its message. Even though the view of God evolves over time, God’s mission in the world does not change.

When struggling with tough Biblical issues, it’s helpful to let the Bible interpret itself. And it’s important to not build a whole theology on one verse or one historical event in the Bible.

There’s the old story about a man who wanted God to speak to him:

God, when I open the Bible, I pray you will speak to me through the first verse I read.

He opened his Bible and the first verse his eyes fell on read: Judas went out and hanged himself.

So, he tried it again. He opened his Bible and the first verse his eyes landed on said: Go and do likewise.

That’s not the way to let the Bible speak to us!

5) Recognize that some things in Bible are more important than others:

  • Loving our neighbor is more important than not picking grain on Sabbath

  • Forgiveness more important than head coverings for women in worship

  • Mercy and justice are more important that animal sacrifices

6)  Jesus is the key for understanding the Bible

Jesus is the Word made flesh. Jesus is the ultimate expression of who God is. Jesus is the face of God. If we want to know what God is like, we can look to Jesus.

Jesus is the filter through whom we read the Bible. He’s the lens that helps us see what God is like from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21. Jesus is the context for how to interpret, read, and hear what God is saying to us through the Word in writing—the Bible. And it’s always important to remember that the God Jesus shows us is the God of the Old Testament.

You can reach me at Tim@TimWrightMinistries.org

What's Up with the Bible?

I’ve read the Bible. That’s why I’m an atheist! (Online meme)

As a Pastor, and as one who loves the Bible, I get it.

After all, the Bible is filled with violence, either at the hand of God or commanded by God. There’s a lot of smiting going on in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament.

Women seem to be demeaned over and over again. Patriarchy seems to reign.

The Bible hard to understand. It’s archaic to say the least.

Sure, it has some beautiful poetry. Psalm 23 comes to mind (The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want...). Or the Genesis 1 creation story (In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth...). Or one of the most moving passages in all of literature, Luke 2 (In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus…)

Sure, it has some interesting insights into life (see Proverbs).

Sure, Jesus, in the Bible, offers a radical view of God and life.

But on the surface, the Bible seems to have far more to overcome than is worth the effort.

Then again, the Bible is the best-selling book in the world. Not bad for a book that’s thousands of years old.

Some great and not so great movies have been made based on the Bible from Samson and Delilah (starring the late, great Victor Mature) to The Greatest Story Ever Told to David and Bathsheba to The Ten Commandments.

Many of the “catch phrases” we use in culture come from the Bible:

But that doesn’t negate the fact that the Bible is filled with so much violence. That the God portrayed there seems to be so cruel and hell-bent on destroying us.

Or… is there another way to read the Bible?

Let’s start here: The Bible is a difficult book to read. Because it wasn’t written to us. It was written to people who lived thousands of years ago, in a very different part of the world from many of us, with a very different world-view.

They didn’t have 21st Century science available to them. They didn’t have social media. They didn’t have access to the international information we have today.

When we try to read the Bible as if it were written to us, we quickly get confused or frustrated.

Another way of saying it—the Bible needs to be read as the Bible wants to be read, not as we think it should be read from our 21st Century world-view.

For example, the earliest Bible characters, like the cultures around them, lacking modern science, assumed that anything and everything that happened, good or ill, happened at the hands of the gods (or God). If it rained, the gods made it rain. If there was a drought, the gods caused the drought. They didn’t have a Farmer’s Almanac to guide them in their planting seasons… only a primitive view of the gods.

They had a pre-modern world-view. And as the Bible writers wrestled with issues of God, life, and faith, they did so through that world-view.

It was easy for the people of Israel to assume that their God was like the other gods—petulant, angry, condemning, one to be afraid of. And we see that view of God again and again in the Bible.

But alongside of that view we also see something shockingly radical about God—that the God of Israel is nothing like the other gods. That the God is Israel is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.

The God of Israel, unlike the other gods, despises child-sacrifice. The God of Israel is not a tribal God, but the God of all creation—a God who creates out of love and grace, not out of violence like the other gods. The God of Israel created male and female equally, in God’s image.

The Bible is an amazing journey of discovery as the people of Israel, living with a pre-modern mindset, surrounded by the gods of other cultures, encounter a radically different kind of divine being: one who loves, saves, and rescues.

That journey reaches its highpoint in the story of Jesus—the One who shows us the true face of God through a cross.

The Bible needs to be read as the Bible wants to be read. That starts with context: The Bible was not written to us.

But the Bible was written for us.

Once we understand the context and how the text was understood originally, we can then ask the question, what, if anything is that text saying to us today?

More next time.

You can reach me at Tim@TimWrightMinistries.org

This is Why, Remarkably, Jesus Loves the Church

In Mark 2 Jesus created a firestorm of shock and scandal both in his inner circle of followers and among the religious elite.

He had the audacity and chutzpah to invite Matthew to follow him.

Matthew was a tax-collector, one of the most hated, despised people in all Israel. Matthew, a Jewish man, worked for the Roman Empire. He collected taxes from his fellow Jews on behalf of the Roman oppressor. While we don’t know this for sure, we can guess that Matthew, like many of the other tax collectors, overcharged his fellow Jews and pocketed the difference, becoming rich in the name of the Romans and on the backs of his fellow Jews.

No wonder the Jews despised tax collectors.

No wonder so many were so miffed at Jesus.

But then it got worse.

Later Matthew invited all of his tax-collecting buddies to dinner and Jesus was the guest of honor, sending the Religious Establishment into a full-blown tizzy.

By eating with them Jesus was publicly treating the tax collectors as his friends.

The religious elite had had enough. They asked him to explain himself. They wanted to know how he could possibly identify with people obviously written off by God.

Jesus said to them:

Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.

And that’s why Jesus still loves the Church!

Because Jesus loves sinners.

Because Jesus has a fondness for broken people.

Because the Church is made up of messy people:

  • People in need of grace

  • People in need of hope

  • People in need of forgiveness

The Church is not a place for perfect people.

It’s not a place for those who have their act together.

It’s for people who fumble their way through life. Sometimes getting it right. More often than not getting it wrong.

But always loved by Jesus no matter what.

To be clear, that doesn’t give the Church the license to hurt others, judge, or condemn. The Christ the Church follows calls us to a radically different relationship to our neighbors. But the reality is, when you bring messy people together messy things will happen.

And that messy stuff makes it easy to dismiss and diss the Church.

At the same time, it’s quite difficult to write off the Church given the impact this messy group of forgiven people has had on the world the last 2000 years.

When a deadly plague hit Rome in the early days of Christianity, the rich and the doctors fled the city for fear of their lives. But the Christians stayed behind. They risked their lives to care for the sick and the dying. And acts of kindness like that have been repeated millions of times since by Christian people over the last 2000 years.

Christians give more money to relief efforts around the world than any other group, and it’s not even close.

Historian and author, Tom Holland, in his epic book, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, (US edition), makes the compelling historical argument that our concepts of equal rights and human dignity grew out of the Christian movement. He also argues that modern education, health care, science, literature, and music, as we know it, were shaped by Christianity. 

Is the Church messy! Absolutely.

Is the Church transformational! Absolutely.

Does Jesus love the Church? Look to the cross.

Perhaps another way of articulating the relationship Jesus has with the Church is this:

If Jesus can’t love the Church… he can’t love you.

If Jesus can’t accept the Church… he can’t accept you.

If Jesus can’t stand by the Church… he can’t stand by you.

Because you are the Church!

But—and this is the Good News:

Because Jesus loves the Church… you can rest assured that he loves you.

Because Jesus is invested in the Church… you can be confident that he is invested in you as well.

Because Jesus is pro Church… you know that his is pro you.

Because you are the Church.

The Church—this

  • Messy

  • Hypocritical

  • Judgmental

  • Ignorant

group of people stands as a constant reminder of God’s grace:

That Jesus only and always seeks out sinners.

And if he can love the Church, he can love you, too.

You can connect with me at Tim@TimWrightMinistries.org