Race and Grace
Will bad things happen to you if you stop reading the Bible? Presumably well-intentioned Christians have expressed the possibility of troubles occurring in my life due to my Bible sabbatical. Over the past several days, I have reflected on these admonitions in relation to my life.
I want to take some time right now to discuss two issues with placing Bible study into a direct cause and effect relationship to the positive and negative experiences in our lives.
1) Read the Bible or Else
Different folks have warned about how either God, my flesh, or the devil is going to get me because I am not reading the Bible for the year.
These warnings bring me to the first issue with directly correlating the performance of Bible reading with blessings and penalties in our lives. These individuals might as well threaten, “Read the Bible or else.” On the contrary, I do not believe God seeks to curse and police us over reading or studying the Bible.
Each time someone has shared something like this with me, I have recalled times where it seemed like hell had broken loose in my life when I not only read and studied the bible, but also taught from it. Events happen beyond our control. That’s life.
I thought about the daily life occurrences—Ups and downs that can happen over the course of a week. I considered how I or anyone can read deeply into life events to try to connect them to the impact of Bible study. Reading the Bible might help us respond to life differently, but it is not causing life events.
We can distort the Biblical principle of “sowing and reaping,” where people believe that by not reading the Bible, they will reap misfortune.
What kind of Gawd logic is this?
The Bible is not a relic to either draw good or ward off evil. Regardless if I study the Bible daily, life will go as usual with different seasons. I shall experience times where I reap the results of sowing, but not that kind of sowing.
If I do not read the Bible I am not sowing calamity into my life. Reading has benefits, but inextricably linking the act of reading to Bible to whether blesses or curses will come upon my life draws from a framework of an angry, punitive God who is difficult to please.
Where is the freedom in this narrative? I believe diverse Christians live in fear of true freedom. Some of us fear losing control of ourselves and others. As a result, we reinforce traditions for living to keep people under our religious influence.
Like those who warn me about quitting the Bible for a year, people get scared about folks sinning and in the flesh.
They act like if Brother Watson misses reading his Bible for two days in a row, that he is going to go from singing in the choir to leading a crime spree. If Brother Watson leads a crime spree, I think his issues ran deeper than reading the Bible.
I am convinced there is no freedom in living in fear that if we do not read the Bible, then God or the devil is going to whoop our tails.
So far, for almost fifty days, my life has been simply life-with winding turns. This past week has been life.
Maybe, because I perceive life as a journey, it challenges the need to over-spiritualize the connection of Bible study with the events along the way. I rather grow in following God and relying on his love continuing to guide me.
2) Privileging Written Text
The second issue with placing Bible study into a direct cause and effect relationship to the positive and negative experiences in our lives is that it privileges written text in spirituality.
I am thankful for developing the skill of reading written text. When we privilege this skill in ways that minimize and downplay to ability to read the world, both natural and spiritual, we begin to confine God to books.
We deceive ourselves into believing that righteousness and blessings come as rewards for our Bible study. No book can contain the fullness of God, including the Bible. God has a way of reminding us of this truth.
For example, I believe many of the “illiterate” enslaved African peoples in the United States had a truer and clearer revelation of God-of Christ- than the White Christian slave owners who read and taught the Bible. Christian slave owners were not financially blessed by God for reading the Bible. Slavery was not a punishment by God for not reading the Bible. Ever hear of ill-gotten gain?
Although I can point to abolitionists who were strong in faith, if we think about the horrors of slavery, it seems to me that people can do evil when they read and study the Bible.
I am unaware of Jesus Christ spreading the gospel of Bible-reading fear, too. I do not recall hearing or reading about Jesus roaming the streets of Jerusalem spontaneously giving Torah-based literacy tests to assess people’s worthiness to follow Him.
Likewise, Jesus did not prophesy anything to the effect of:
Hark! The Charlie’s angels sing, glory to me, me, me.
Listen up, Y’all.
One day, after I have gone home to be with Jes-…um… never mind.
In the future, my disciples’ accounts of me and other writings will be assembled into a sacred book.
I command you to read these words daily and memorize them.
Verily, verily I say unto those who break this commandment, with all-encompassing power of the heavenly hosts, I shall send a fiery wrath to smite you with an apocalyptic terror so mortifying that it will make the ten plagues of Egypt look like a game of hopscotch.
Ya hur me. Peace be with you.
God will not unleash peril into your life if you do not read the Bible. I believe it seems scary for some of us to trust God apart from the Bible because we have been taught fear in the name of love.
I want you to know that God knows how to reveal His love to us (and anyone) with and without the Bible.
If we really truly seek God, one thing I can attest to, is that He will get our attention to transform. When we trust Him, we plant, water, and relinquish trying to force God’s harvest.
Conclusion: Biblically Illiterate to Spiritually Literate
If somehow over the years, you have developed a guilt complex involving reading the Bible, I want you to know that you do not need to look over your shoulder for some kind of penalty from heaven or hell.
You drain your soul by analyzing every trial and triumph to ascertain its connection to your Bible study habits.
Contrary to dominant Christian religious perspectives, if you do not read the Bible for the rest of your life, you can still walk in the authority, love, and freedom of Christ.
Do not get me wrong, I consider it a powerful advantage to have the skill of reading, and I appreciate reading the Bible.
On the other hand, some of us can unintentionally place ourselves on a spiritual pedestal because of this skill and access to advanced studies of the Bible. We can begin to rely on our Bible studies to the extent of believing we “need” it to prove our spiritual worth to others.
Perhaps living more Biblically illiterate can compel us to draw closer to rely on God without the use of our textual tools and resources. That is forgoing our Biblical literacy practices could lead to bolstering our spiritual literacy- growing in understanding the things of the Spirit.
Right now, I am drawn to the kind of spirituality where the Father (neither flesh, blood nor a book) revealed that Christ was the Son of God to Peter. This walk transcends our predetermined text-based behaviors reinforced through religious culture.
We cannot find all of this walk in a book.
Instead, we can drink from the living water of God that meets us right where we are in any season of our lives, allowing scripture to stem from our experiences.
Three Points of Wisdom from Days 43-49
- Life will have various seasons. God is not out to reward and punish you over your Bible study.
- You can read the Bible, which is useful, without ever learning to read the physical and spiritual world.
- Your joy and peace in Christ shrinks when you condemn yourself for not reading the Bible.
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