It’s Bible Time! (Part 1: No Time)

Bible reading is extremely time-consuming. It takes a staggering 80 hours to read the whole thing at a moderately slow pace. Think of it, the equivalent of two 40-hour work weeks!

Its longest book, Samuel-Kings, takes 9-1/2 hours to tackle. Can you imagine? 9-1/2 hours on one book?

Only 38 of its nearly 60 books can be read in an hour or less.

John’s soaring gospel of new creation? 2-1/2 hours. Ecclesiastes honest wrestling with life’s paradoxes? 30 long minutes. Amos’ withering critique of a wealthy, self-indulgent society? The same. Paul’s theological masterpiece in the letter to the Christ-followers in Rome? One hour. Galatians’ punchy critique of ethnic or social divisions within the new people of God? 20 minutes. Revelation’s apocalypse of hope and encouragement in the rule of the Messiah? A whopping hour PLUS 10 minutes.

And that’s just a few samples. Try to imagine the rest.

It’s true that its five shortest books take just 5 minutes each, but that’s not counting set-up and take-down time (finding your Bible, getting a comfortable seat, finding your place, turning off the light when you’re done, etc.). It is still a significant investment for busy people.

The 70’s Canadian rock band The Guess Who gave us the song “No Time,” which summarizes the situation nicely for us:

No time left for you

On my way to better things
There’s no time left for you

I got, got, got, got no time.

Or do you?

-Glenn

C.S. Lewis On Using a Book vs. Receiving It

Writing in “An Experiment in Criticism,” C.S. Lewis claims a work of art can be either ‘received’ or ‘used’. What’s the difference? “When we ‘use’ it we treat it as assistance for our own activities.” ‘Using’ a text means that we have already decided what we want from it. We have an agenda. We come to the text already looking for something, expecting to find it. It is a position of mastery. We are standing over the text, telling it what we want it for. It is a position of impatience. We don’t have time to learn what a text is about on its own terms.

Literary type? An academic exercise.

Historical setting? Not relevant to me and my current needs.

On the other hand, when we ‘receive’ a work of art, “we exert our senses and imagination and various other powers according to a pattern invented by the artist.” Receiving a text is a stance of humility. It is a giving up of oneself to the text. It is letting the author and his choices direct our reading. As Lewis says, “The first demand of any work . . . makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive.”

Lewis explains the superiority of ‘receiving’ this way: “The one, to use an old-fashioned image, is like being taken for a bicycle ride by a man who may know roads we have never explored. The other is like adding one of those little motor attachments to our own bicycle and then going for one of our familiar rides.”

Bible formats are based on understandings of what kind of book it is. Is it a user’s manual? A reference work? A love letter? A magazine? What kind of writings do we really have in the Bible? Our answer to this will lead us to either ‘use’ or ‘receive’ the Bible.

A Bible that is covered over in an imposed system of chapters, verses, section headings, and cross-references is a Bible that invites being ‘used.’ It is an offer to race around picking up bits and pieces of predetermined religious teaching here and there. It is a format that seeks to override the original work of the authors.

A Bible without the additives is an attempt to ‘receive’ it as a varied collection of real books. It presents an offer to more slowly and intentionally take in the Bible on its own terms.

-Glenn

C. S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism (Cambridge University Press, 1961), pp. 88-89.

Know the Bible? (Part 3)

What if we didn’t have a choice?

What if none of our Bibles had chapters and verses?

What would we do?

Imagine if “the people of the Book” knew their Bibles well enough to find passages based on their knowledge of whole books. This doesn’t mean knowing every word. This means knowing the general outline or “flow” of the content of individual books of the Bible.

“Bible memorization” is commonly used to refer to committing a series of Bible “verses” to memory. Our focus has been on getting word for word accuracy of little bits of the Bible. And that’s fine as far as it goes. But what about “knowing” the Bible a different way? What about having the kind of familiarity with the Bible that would allow us to talk about it by referring to the internal structure of its books. This is not just vagueness and imprecision. This is the kind of knowledge that comes from giving something that is worthy the attention it deserves over time.

Impossible?

Why?

Why, if we can learn the arcane statistics of our favorite sports celebrity, if we can learn the intricacies of our computer’s software, if we can go on and on about the details of all our special interests, hobbies, businesses, etc., then why can’t we come to be intimately familiar with this collection of sacred writings?

The fact is, we can do this. We can learn the seven major sections of the first half of John’s gospel. The general whereabouts of the Jacob and Esau stories in Genesis. The church’s issues Paul responds to in I Corinthians. The order of the collection of Ezekiel’s prophecies to Israel, to the nations, and then his promise of hope and restoration. Etc. Then when it comes time to ponder the smaller sections of the Bible, or taking in our pastor’s sermon on one passage, we will have the ability to reflect on it based on that little piece’s place in the whole. We will know its context.

And when we hear somebody else versejacking (somebody else, because we don’t do it anymore, right?), we will at least have a chance to evaluate whether or not the meaning they are assigning that smattering of words is appropriate to what’s really happening in that section of the Bible.

Want to really know the Bible?

Forget chapters and verses, and re-discover the real beauty behind the mask.

-Glenn

Know the Bible? (Part 2)

Luke, Matthew, Mark, John, Paul, Peter, Apollos, Ignatius, Irenaeus, Justin, Polycarp, Origen, a couple of Clements, Tertullian, Chrysostom, Athanasius, Augustine, Gregory, Jerome, Cyril, Basil, Ambrose, Anselm, Bernard, Wycliffe, Thomas a Kempis, Erasmus, Tyndale, Luther, and Calvin—just a few of the people who couldn’t study the Scriptures very well because they didn’t have the benefit of a shared, numbered chapter and verse system to navigate by.

And then there’s this fellow:

“He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me.”

Perhaps there’s more to Bible study than following a string of numbered references. Perhaps there’s another way to know the Bible.

-Glenn

De-versify.com

Glenn's out this week at the Emergent Gathering, so he asked me to give a brief update on de-versify.com. The site is up and running, check it out and tell us what you think. The communities on Facebook and Myspace pages are growing bigger all the time. It's all pretty exciting.
As soon as we get everything in place, we'll start accepting entries for the worst chapter break contest. We're still deciding what to give the winner, but trust me, it'll be sweet. After that, we'll also do a worst verse break contest, so start making your list! We'll let you know right here as soon as it's ready.
Best of all, in my opinion, will be the "Tell Your Story" section. We'll blog the stories of people from all over as they encounter The Books of The Bible, small groups, churches, and individuals who are using it themselves and are giving it away to others. If you've got a story, send it our way at the contact page. We'd love to hear it.
For mo'betta Bible reading,
-p