Hermeneutics 097

A lot of people have a hard time reading the bible. They believe that it is too difficult to read and even more difficult to understand. I was teaching out of Revelation this past Sunday which is arguably the most difficult book in the bible to interact with. As I was explaining some of the fantastic imagery, I was reminded about how often we pause on certain passages and never get past them because they are confusing or we have missed something: There are going to be Dragons in the future? There are going to be great Beasts and women with stars on their head? The stars are literally going to fall to the earth? These and even less troubling passages give us pause and sometimes end in us leaving the bible and walking away rather than digging in to find the answers. Think of Jesus when he said his followers had to eat his flesh and drink his blood, they misunderstood and walked away. This is a tragedy. God gave us his word to teach and instruct us so that we can live fulfilling lives pleasing to him. So I want to just list a few tips to help you read your bible.

The first and most obvious one is to re-read the passage you have just read. Sometimes we miss things because the style or even the words themselves are foreign to us. We should familiarize ourselves with the wording and meaning of words that the bible uses as much as possible. A secondary taking in of the words can sometimes help us with something we have overlooked.

Second, get a broader perspective. Read the surrounding passages, sometimes we think that because we are in a new chapter that it is a completely new thought. We have to realize that the current breaking of the words with chapter and verses wasn't added until the 16th century to make things easier for us to read and reference. This has helped tremendously but it was a two-edged sword in that it also put unnatural breaks in the flow of thoughts that were not intended. So understand that just because you are in a new chapter doesn't mean the author has moved on from the previous point he was making, sometimes entire books are building on a single theme and progressively mounting up the theology, so reading individual chapters might detached you from the overall point. A lot of times the Bible defines stuff for us if we keep reading, or remember to look back at what was previously stated.

I will have more tips in the following days.