This week, over 500 Christian leaders, celebrities, & high-ranking government officials took turns reading the Bible from start to finish in Washington, D.C. They spent 12 hours each day for 6 days. It’s not a cure-all for what ails our nation, but elevating the place of Scripture is definitely needed.
There’s no substitute for reading or listening to God’s Word on a regular basis. It’s likely the #1 catalyst for spiritual growth because it feeds our souls & develops a biblical worldview so that we think God’s thoughts & have the mind of Christ (Heb. 5:12-14, Rom. 12:2, 2 Tim. 3:16-17, Ps. 19:7-8). Scripture exposes false teaching & offers transformation, (Acts 17:11, Heb. 13:17, 4:12, James 1:22-25). The Bible makes us wise for salvation & equipped for every good work (2 Tim. 3:15-17). It empowers us to resist temptation (Ps. 119:11, Eph. 6:17). In the late 1800’s, famed evangelist Dwight Moody said, “Sin will keep you from the Bible, or the Bible will keep you from sin.”
Why do you suppose God gave us a book to read? Isn’t it reasonable to assume the Creator would desire to communicate with His creation? Why would He make us in His image with the capacity to think & relate, & then not communicate with us? A verbal communication from God is essential for understanding His mind (Is. 55:8-11). God spoke directly only to a handful of people–inspiring the prophets & apostles who recorded what He revealed &/or what they personally witnessed. A book (actually a collection of 66 writings) is a permanent, objective record that can be verified. The Bible bears the marks of divine rather than human origin, surviving thousands of years, & is still most important & widely-read book.
Verbal communication is good, & oral tradition can be reliable when practiced by serious “historians,” but putting it in writing makes it verifiable & accessible to everyone at all times. People can make the effort to learn the original languages to be able to read it (as Bible teachers like me do in seminary), but God doesn’t demand that. We know the Hebrew Scriptures early on were translated into Aramaic & Greek, but the New Testament was translated quickly into a multitude of languages. If God took pains to make sure it got written down, wouldn’t you expect He’d go to great pains to preserve it so that we could still read it today?
But are people reading it? American surveys reflect self-reported data that most own Bibles & view them positively, but actual cover-to-cover reading is rare. About 90% of Americans say they’ve read at least some of the Bible (which could be just a few sentences); about 16% have read around half the BIble; another approximate 14% have read “most” of it; & about 15% have read the entire Bible at least once.
But I suspect that this self-reporting reflects inflated numbers (just like church attendance does, which I wrote about last week) because people want to appear more spiritual than they really are. Optimistically, we could assume that the share among Christians is higher–likely 25% to 50% depending on what kind of Christian they claim to be (highly committed churchgoers among “evangelicals” would be on the high end, while nominal non-churchgoers, mainline liberals, & Catholics would be on the lower end). About half read at least weekly, while about 30% of Protestant churchgoers read daily (it’s lower for other Christian groups). Christians who haven’t read the Bible are like people who watch a movie trailer & claim, “I love this movie!”
Why is Bible reading so rare? Apart from spiritual factors, it’s often due to a perceived lack of time or difficulty in focusing & understanding it. Of course, these are often rationalizations for people who find time for TV viewing & internet scrolling. Reading Scripture has to become a habit by carving out time to make it a priority. Waiting till you “get around to it” or “feel like it,” means you’ll likely never read it.
This most privileged of all generations has access to voluminous Bible study resources to help with understanding. At our “One Mind” books area in the church lobby, we offer ESV Study Bibles & children’s Bibles available for donation (paperback New Testaments are free). We also offer resources to help with understanding Scripture, doctrine, & theology so that we can be “in full accord and of one mind” (Phil. 2:2, Eph. 4:13, Titus 1:9, 2:1). You can build your own personal library of basic Bible study materials.
We also offer classes & groups to help you understand Scripture. When you read & study with others, you can come into a deeper understanding of Christianity, with different insights gained from different perspectives. Last Sunday, I dropped into our Sr. High students’ gathering where about 3 dozen teens all sat with open Bibles, reading together & discussing the book of James verse by verse.
If you’ve never read through the entire Bible, why not start now? By reading 3 or so chapters per day, you could finish in a year. By reading just a couple of chapters daily, you’d get through it in about a year & a half. You can go to OnlyGodCanHelp.com/bible to find suggestions. But remember, the Bible isn’t like other books that you read just once. It’s something to continue reading the rest of your life because it’s how God speaks to you.