How should we read and study the Scriptures? This might seem like an odd question. You just pick up the Bible and read it, right?
Even if you just pick the Bible up and read it, you are going to use a process and a set of presuppositions about the Bible that will impact the meaning you find there. To read correctly, then, you need a proper hermeneutic. Don’t be put off by the long, complicated word–it literally just means: “the means and assumptions you bring to reading a text.”

To read the Bible correctly, you need a proper hermeneutic. We’ll talk about a process and set of assumptions through this series of dispatches–but first, let’s slay some myths.

Slaying Myths

• Have you heard these myths about reading the Bible, though?
• It takes so much work “to really study the Scriptures. I don’t have the time or energy!
• There are so many interpretations. I can never know which one is right.
• There is so much technical language. I can never understand this.
• I can never really understand the Bible the way experts can.
• If I read the Bible without a tradition or chur
• If I read the Bible without a tradition or church to guide me, I will just end up with false beliefs

These kinds of objections are often enough to drive Christians away from studying the Scriptures in any depth. A lot of Christians think: “It’s so hard. I’ll just read a bit every day, and do some devotionals, and leave it to some expert to tell me what to believe.”

The question, “How should we read the Scriptures,” might seem a little silly at first, but it becomes urgent when we consider all the objections to studying the Scriptures. How can we learn to really study the Scriptures? Why should we learn to really read and study the Bible?

I don’t have the time or energy

When you are hungry, you have two options:

• Cook
• Let someone else cook for you

It might be easier to let someone else cook for you all the time—but it’s not healthy.

You don’t need to be a gourmet to make basic meals.

You don’t need to be a Biblical expert to study and understand the Scriptures. There will always be a better Biblical expert than you (thank God!), of course, but you will be a healthier Christian if you learn to study the Bible for yourself.

It is healthier to cook than eat out all the time.

Food made from fresh ingredients is almost always healthier and less expensive (so it’s financially healthier), and being able to cook is a fundamental life skill just about everyone should have.

You can only know the difference between junk food and healthy food if you know how to cook. You can only know the difference between good Christian teaching and junk if you know how to study the Bible.

You cannot learn to cook overnight.

People who struggle to boil water think complex, multistep, multiday recipes are complex. However, the person who can create dishes from complex recipes all started by boiling a pot of water. If you want to learn to cook, you start with the basics and build skills over time.
Studying the Scriptures is the same. The first time you encounter David, you might need to take some time to really understand who David is, his importance in the Biblical story, and the culture in which he lived. The second time you encounter David, you already know all of these things—it will become part of your background knowledge, just like boiling water is background knowledge for cooking.

Learning the Bible takes time. Be patient with yourself.

I don’t have the time.

How much time do you spend working? How much time do you spend watching television? How much time do you spend on social media?

If you are a Christian, God should be the most important person in your life, and becoming more completely Christian should be the most important thing you do. Going to church to learn the Bible is like going out for food a couple of times a week and saying: “that’s enough of that.”

You can make time to really study the Bible—especially if you give yourself permission to take one step at a time.

There are so many different interpretations

There are so many experts and so many different interpretations. No-one really knows what the Scriptures say for certain! Remember the elephant and the blind wise men?

Yes, a group of blind experts can examine an elephant and come to many different conclusions about its nature. But there is still one elephant.

The problem is not that the elephant does not exist or that it does not have a real shape and personality; it is that we stop exploring when we’ve finished with the elephant’s toes. Rather than saying, ” No one can know,” say, “To know the truth, we need more context.”

There are two equal and opposite errors here.

The first is to reduce all Scripture to a single meaning. This is like reading Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend to compile a list of common names in Victorian England.

The second is like reading Our Mutual Friend as a treatise on racism in New England America.

We need to avoid both extremes when reading the Scriptures.

A single truth can have many different facets. A tree has different aspects at different times of its life and different times of the year. A tree has different parts that solve different problems. A single diamond has multiple facets. A hologram looks different from various angles, in a different light, and at different distances.

The Scriptures are like a diamond or a hologram. We should see the Scriptures the way Lucy, in The Last Battle, sees the real Narnia:

“I see,” she said. “This is still Narnia, and more real and more beautiful than the Narnia down below, just as it was more real and more beautiful than the Narnia outside the stable door! I see… world within world, Narnia within Narnia….’’ “Yes,” said Mr. Tumnus, “like an onion: except that as you continue to go in and in, each circle is larger than the last.” And Lucy looked this way and that and soon found that a new and beautiful thing had happened to her. Whatever she looked at, however far away it might be, once she had fixed her eyes steadily on it, became quite clear and close as if she were looking through a telescope.[1]

We do not need to spiritualize the Scriptures to see there are layers and layers of meaning. There can be a single meaning with lots of different facets.

The Scriptures have many more facets than any work written by a person. 66 books, many authors, and one overall author. There is one truth, but there are many facets to that truth. God is infinite. God can walk and chew gum at the same time.

There is so much technical language

A lot of technical language surrounds Bible study. I can never learn it!

For instance, the process of reading and understanding a text—any text—is called hermeneutics. I can see a bunch of readers out there rolling their eyes … “Here we go with these big words…”

The world has a love/hate relationship towards big words or technical language. We love to use technical language to end arguments in our favor, but we also hate technical language when it is used to defeat our point of view in an argument. We love technical language when it allows us to say: “you do not know what you are talking about,” but we hate it when it is used to say: “you do not know what you are talking about.”

We love to hate technical language because we want to be mediocre. Mediocre feels more relatable and authentic.

We need to get past this dislike of technical language if we are going to actively engage with the Scriptures. Just as you cannot engage with a builder working on your house understanding the technical language of plumbing, electrical, and framing, you need to accept that technical language is neither good nor bad—it just is.

Just because something has a fancy name does not mean it is hard or complex. A technical term, such as hermeneutics, is like going to a local restaurant and ordering by the number or title of a dish. A technical term collects a lot of thoughts into a single word so we can communicate clearly and quickly—nothing more, nothing less.

I can never hope to be as good as these experts

But I need a cloud of experts to understand the Scriptures! Where do I even start?

Thank God for experts! Every cook needs at least one cookbook, right? But just because there are experts does not mean you cannot learn how to cook a good meal (or cookie!). Why should you learn to read and study the Scriptures yourself rather than relying on experts constantly?
Because experts are human—and as humans, they have their limits.

Experts often seek uniqueness. We live in a world where millions of books are published each year. To stand out in the crowd, you have to say something different.

Experts often seek acceptance. Every expert out there is a person who wants to have a job and support a family. They want respect, to be asked out to dinner by the right people, to be asked to speak at the right conferences, to have the right titles and all the rest.

Experts often seek validation. If you develop a unique theory about how all paints really start from a black base, and then dyes are subtracted to create different colors, this perspective is going to color the way you look at every piece of art and painted wall in the world. In fact, you would seek to validate your theory through every piece of art and every painted wall. All experts have a view of God and theology, and all read their view into their reading of the Scriptures.

Experts can be helpful; they can inform your reading. Consulting an expert is like using a guide to take you through a foreign city in some cases—you just don’t know where to look to find the important or interesting things all the time. Experts can be like a magnifying glass or a pair of binoculars—they can help you see something more clearly.

Experts and tradition should inform, rather than control, our understanding of the Scriptures.

The Bible can only be understood within a tradition

But I cannot read the Scriptures accurately without the tradition of my church!

Church tradition is nothing more than a discussion among experts, and it varies as much as the opinions of different experts. If you assume the Roman Catholic Church is the only repository of Scriptural truth, you are still mired in a lot of different traditions. Do you hold to Jesuit, Molinistic, or Thomistic theology? There are so many variants it is hard to know where to start.
We’ll look at a good process to study the Scriptures in later dispatches.

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[1] C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle: The Chronicles of Narnia (Harper Collins, 2006).