Ursula’s Plea

The current issue of Harper’s Magazine (Feb 2008) features an article by Ursula Le Guin called “Staying Awake: Notes on the alleged decline of reading.” What we read here is right in line with what we explored earlier with C.S. Lewis’ comments about ‘receiving’ a book rather than ‘using’ it. Le Guin’s contention is that it’s no surprise not everyone is up to reading:

“In its silence, a book is a challenge: it can’t lull you with surging music or deafen you with screeching laugh tracks or fire gunshots in your living room; you have to listen to it in your head. A book won’t move your eyes for you the way images on a screen do. It won’t move your mind unless you give it your mind, or your heart unless you put your heart into it. It won’t do the work for you. To read a story well is to follow it, to act it, to feel it, to become it—everything short of writing it, in fact.”

Entering into a story on its own terms. Imagine. Giving a story your mind—more, your heart. A two-way set of expectations. Not just readers with their requirements, but stories looking for good readers. Readers who honor the covenant between author and audience. Le Guin continues, “Reading is not ‘interactive’ with a set of rules or options, as games are; reading is actual collaboration with the writer’s mind.”

This is as far away from our snippet-searching, give-me-a-verse-for-today typical Bible ‘use’ (one can’t really call it reading) as it could be.

Ursula Le Guin, advocate for mo’ betta reading.

-Glenn

Another reading alternative

Glenn mentioned last time that reading the Bible in TBoTB format might cause such unintended
side effects as enjoyment, understand and consuming vast quantities of Scripture in one sitting. Dr. Winn Griffin has stepped up to the plate with a 100 day Bible reading challenge. Looks pretty interesting. I signed up earlier today. Way to go Winn!

I Hereby Resolve

I know, you know, we all know that most new year’s resolutions are quickly made and quickly broken. Including resolves “to read through the Bible this year.” It is, of course, a worthy goal. Have you ever done it? Every educated person should. There are lots of great reasons to do so, but one is simply that it is the single most influential book in Western Civilization, influencing every possible arena of life and culture.

But is there any reason to believe this resolution would turn out any differently than all those failed promises of the past? Well, yes, there is.

The Books of The Bible offers you an genuinely different reading experience. Now you can read the Bible naturally, as the collection of stories, songs, wisdom sayings, and prophetic visions that it really is. You don’t have to fight through all those additives that complicate the Bible. You can just sit down and read.

Simple.

What you’ll find is that the Bible is actually quite readable when you agree to take it in the way its authors intended, as complete books.

So how about it? You could get a couple of your friends and agree to read through it together. You can compare notes along the way. I guarantee you’ll have plenty to talk about.

An easy way to get started is to check out the reading plans on this site. You’ll have a choice between two different ways to read through the whole book in one year, reading just 15 minutes a day, six days a week. And actually, you may just want to skip the plan and start reading. I’ll bet you’re amazed at how quickly you make your way through it, and you will undoubtedly read more than a mere 15 minutes per sitting.

I hereby resolve to read through the Bible this year.

I hereby commit myself to mo’ betta Bible reading.

I hereby open myself to a new experience with the sacred text.

Care to join me?

-Glenn