I think one of the most important things we can do is daily Bible study.
Not everyone will agree with me, of course. And that’s fine. But I think, even if you don’t have much of a faith or religion, there are a lot of benefits to reading the Bible every day. And if you do claim to have faith, then it’s absolutely vital.
At face value, the idea is easy. You read the Bible. But it isn’t entirely a piece of cake. It takes discipline. And there’s a lot of pressure surrounding it, especially in religious circles. But still, it is important to read the Bible every day.
WHY Daily Bible Study?
The issue is literacy.
Timmy is starting Kindergarten this fall. I absolutely love our school’s kindergarten teachers. And the reading teachers. Heck, I spent about 12 hours one week last spring helping them sort and inventory the books in the reading resource room. Because these ladies rock. They spend their days teaching kids to read, read more, read better than where they do right now.
And why do they do that? Because reading is absolutely essential for success. If you can’t read, if you can comprehend or apply what you read, you cannot make it very far in life. Literacy–the ability to read and write–is fundamental to our daily functioning, whether you enjoy reading or not.
The same is true for Bible Study.
Biblical literacy is absolutely fundamental for success in a life of faith. Not just flipping open to a verse or two. Not just going to church on Sunday where (hopefully) someone opens God’s word and talks about it. (As a side note, if your church does not have the Bible open every Sunday, you need to find a new church. The Bible is that important.)
And each of us is responsible to feed our faith by interacting with, engaging with God’s word.
So what, exactly, is Biblical literacy?
Well, it’s not the ability to recite names or stories. It’s more than knowing the big, old-time, King James Version words. It’s “a deeper awareness of not only the content but also the meaning of Scripture.” Biblical literacy means actually knowing what the Bible says. Knowing it so well, we start to see connections between stories or passages. Recognize how it all fits together. Become comfortable with the who, the what, the why of the Bible and the God who gave it to us.
And sadly, more and more, this kind of Biblical literacy is missing from our culture … and from our churches.
There was a time in our culture when nearly everyone knew the Bible: the main characters, the stories, the familiar passages, the Lord’s Prayer. People who wouldn’t dare set foot in a church would recognize that a quote was from the Bible. But it doesn’t work that way anymore. And at the same time that our culture has lost its sense of the Bible, so have many churches. People who show up every Sunday don’t know how to navigate or read their Bibles. Children in Sunday school never even see a Bible. We talk about moral themes, not actual passages in the Bible. Pastors pull random texts to prove their points instead of explaining the Bible’s claims as they actually are.
We’re missing the Bible from our churches, from our culture, and from our lives.
Back to the Book
So, I’m going to take a few days of my daily blogging challenge to talk about Biblical literacy (actually I’ll stop using the phrase after today, but that’s still what my point is). Not just to make you feel guilty if you don’t read your Bible every day. But to encourage you to do it. That you CAN do it. And maybe even give you some tools that will equip you to do it better.
I actually gave a couple of talks on this topic recently, so some of this series will come from those talks. But I have more to say than I can fit into a speaking session, so if you got to hear those talks, I’ll have new things to add along the way.
So, let’s dive in. Let’s get back to the Bible. Like flossing and sweeping the floor, daily Bible study is a valuable and important thing to do.
