Seriously, Read the Bible

Last night I was interviewed by a columnist for our local news paper. I’m not doing a very good job of carrying out the very simple tasks of book promotion that I promised both myself and others I would do. Fortunately, a couple of other people have been doing some of them for me. In this case, calling the paper and telling them they had a hot hot story on their hands, cough.

I sat in the garish light of our parish hall, fiddling with my phone and struggling to say even basic things about my book. “Who are you hoping will read it?” I was asked. And, “What is it about?”

“Um,” I said. And “So.”
“Well, lots of Christians have a hard time reading the Bible. It’s really hard.” I blathered feeling really stupid.

I mean, is the Bible that hard? I think so. I myself find it hard, and I have an overall understanding of what it’s about. I’m not cracking some massive black family copy open for the first time and trying to read the tiny print. If I was, I would think, “! You Have Got To Be Kidding Me.” I still sometimes think that as I carry on, chapter after chapter, listening to the nice guy read it online.

I think the Bible is really hard to read. And therefore, like anything that you think you ought to do but don’t really want to, it’s charmingly easy to put little conditions around the task. I’ll read it when I’ve cleared off the kitchen table and done all the laundry. I’ll read it after I finish this one thing. I’ll read it when no one is around. This morning I said, “I’ll read it when Matt goes to work out.” But he’s sick, and he’s not working out, so I’m not reading it.

But what happens if you don’t bother? And worse, if you have a whole generation of people who haven’t bothered, who don’t know the first thing about what it’s for, who it’s about, or what it’s describing? It’s not just that you have biblical illiteracy–which is tragic when there are more copies and more ways to read it and hear it than ever before–it’s that individual people created by God live unmoored from a true sense of themselves. Which sense is directly bound up in their sense of who God is. I mean, I’m not saying anything new. You have to know God as he is in himself, otherwise you make him to be a reflection of you and who you are, and then you worship that. It’s called idolatry and we all do it, every one of us.

But the problem with this new modern idolatry–the individual floating around untethered to any real rather than imagined divine thread–is that it’s boring. The selfie, the fifty shades of ugly, the my-feelings-measure-everything-especially-God, all that is so pale and insipid compared to the complexity and strangeness of God as he is revealed in the scriptures.

He is Other in the land where the other has no room. He is Other in the land where everyone is estranged. He is Other in the kingdom of anxiety where everyone is looking for consolation and comfort. The violence, the difficulty, the long ago and far away of some other culture and language–we don’t have interior room to go and live in a place, through the pages of the scripture, where we don’t know the people and we don’t know the food.

It is hard. But it is also the only thing. It is the best and most perfect remedy for the shadows and shades and narcissism of this culture. If your feelings measure everything, if they are the norm that norms all other norms, and you can’t bear to admit that you are stuck and unhappy, even so, open the Bible and read. Click open the app and listen.

The person you will find there is not like you. He is powerful, mighty, perfect. But he was also willing to lay aside the glory of heaven to come and be with you, wherever you are.

When you open the book, or scroll through the chapters on the screen, that Other Person, so unlike you, will emerge, will say something to you through this ancient and difficult text. That person will add layers of color and richness to the life you are living right now, will tie you to the rock, the cornerstone so that you are unable to drift away or get lost. That person will feed you, will stop you from being so spiritually thirsty and strung out, will clothe your own perception of yourself, will make space for silence when all the world is clamoring.

Read it. It’s the only thing.