Recently I read an article about how some prominent Christian leaders are giving up on private Bible reading. As reasons they are citing their lack of confidence in their interpretations of the Scriptures and also their (correct) belief that the Bible’s books were intended to be read publicly, not privately. Their goals are that they (a) not misinterpret the Bible, and (b) not separate the Bible from its cultural context. So their conclusion is that one ought just not to approach the text at all on one’s own.
In one sense the humility of these leaders is refreshing. Unlike a lot of other religious leaders these days, they are not claiming a monopoly on Biblical interpretation! But at the end of the day their decision to give up on private Bible reading is a bad idea. Think of the massive contemporary Biblical illiteracy problem. There are countless Christians and non-Christians alike nowadays who simply do not know what the Bible says.
Consider just a few of the Bible mistakes that have recently been made by the reporters and columnists of the New York Times. Such persons ought because of their education and cultural prominence to be more Biblically informed than average citizens. But the New York Times has preposterously reported in recent months that Jesus is buried in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, that Easter celebrates Jesus’s ‘resurrection into heaven,’ that William Butler Yeats is the author of the Book of Hebrews, and that the Book of Romans calls for the execution of gays. Such claims are outrageous and they suggest – along with a lot of other evidence – that we are currently facing a plague of Biblical illiteracy. In fact our main goal right now ought not to be interpretive accuracy. It ought instead to be to fight ignorance.
Today the Bible is being read only sparingly in public outside of church services. If private Bible reading were to be lost, a major tool against Biblical illiteracy would be lost as well. To give up on private Bible reading because of one’s misinterpretation fears is to forget how much easier such misinterpretation will become once one does not know what the Bible says at all! We humans are far more likely to scramble spiritual truths if we are never or only occasionally encountering them than if we are encountering them frequently in both public and private settings. To give up entirely on private Bible reading because of one’s interpretive fears is to succumb to the inordinately pessimistic claims of postmodern theorists like Gadamer and Derrida about the difficulties of written texts.
Bible Reader, Steelman, Wikimedia Commons, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/deed.en
Another reason for pursuing private Bible reading is that it facilitates the propositional knowledge of God. The historic tendency of evangelical Christians has been to prioritize the relational knowledge of God over the propositional. To give up on private Bible reading would be to further elevate the relational over the propositional, the experiential over the conceptual. Much healthier is a spiritual life that simultaneously emphasizes both ways of knowing God, rather than the relational alone.
Again, still another justification for private Bible reading is that it is in fact possible for conscientious laypersons to understand the Bible’s essentials. The Bible is not so nebulous a book that its central themes are not discernible to persons without advanced forms of cultural and textual training. Understanding the Bible is hard work, to be sure, but its core ideas are accessible when laypersons are willing to work hard and to subject themselves to appropriate interpretive boundaries. Of course, laypersons ought also to be cautious. For instance, they ought regularly to seek out an interpretive community because part of being conscientious about a text like the Bible is being willing to surround oneself with interpretive assistants.
No pastor or layperson ought ever to seek to be a wholly private Bible reader (and in fact I suspect that such independence is practically impossible). Community participation of at least some kind is necessary to equip laypersons for an appropriate interpretation. What do I mean by community? I mean especially a virtual community of commentaries, lexical aids, sermon notes, and online videos. Such aids are antidotes to bizarre or offbeat Biblical interpretations. Such a methodology ought I think to be resonant for those Christian leaders who are giving up on private Bible reading. After all, their motivation in doing so is their interpretive conscientiousness.
My own experiences with private Bible reading have been uniformly positive. My usual practice has been to seek first to grasp the facts of the text on my own and then only later to understand it alongside others in communal-style interpretations. My suspicion is that this private regimen that has been of such incalculable importance in my own spiritual walk has been of equal importance as well in the lives of a lot of my fellow contemporary Christians.
Note: a version of this blog post appeared before on this blog. That earlier version has been substantially edited and updated here.
