Jamin Bradley

Question: How can it be beneficial for a non-clergy person to read the Bible at home when it is so easy to misunderstand and so harmful if those misunderstandings are implemented?

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Answer: Ooo, good question. It’s been noted by many that it may have been a dangerous idea to give everyone a Bible, since throughout history before the printing press, it was taught by scholars and read in communities. In inexperienced hands, it can end up saying the opposite of what it means to say. Without historical and cultural research, it can be taken out of context and its point can be missed completely. And in the hands of power, it can be quoted to enforce whatever the powerful want to say (see the movie “Book of Eli” for a great portrait of this).

But that being said, there are two main ways to read the Bible and I think both are necessary. One way is in a scholarly manner, where we are doing our best to understand the Bible as an ancient book. Such studies bring the Bible to life in ways we would otherwise miss entirely. Our understanding of the Bible has grown immensely over the last century as newly uncovered artifacts and archeological research (like that of the Dead Sea Scrolls) have given us a deeper glimpse into the various worlds of the past that we didn’t know as clearly before. This brings the Bible to life in a whole new way.

However, we must also read the Bible spiritually. After Jesus was resurrected from the dead, he walked to Emmaus with his disciples and explained things in the Scriptures that they never noticed before to show what he did on the cross. To see the Bible this way, they didn’t need a scholar as much as they needed the Holy Spirit. The same goes for us. The New Testament authors quote the Old Testament out-of-context quite a bit, but their out-of-context quotes are now Scripture to us, too. As these writers read the Old Testament, the Spirit made passages light up to them in a way that they hadn’t before, and those new interpretations became biblical canon as well.

I remember trying to read through the prophets really fast in one season of my life and I came away completely devastated. The Bible didn’t build me up—it ripped me apart, and now I felt distant from God, not closer. When I finally sat down to pray about it many weeks later, I felt as though God said, “You read my book just to get through it. You didn’t read it with me.” It occurred to me at that moment that if the Spirit is the one who inspired Scripture, maybe I would do well to read it with the Spirit.

So in the end, read it spiritually, read it scholarly—spirit and science—experience and reason. Let both directions inform and grow you. And in today’s day and age with all of our online resources, everyone has a better chance of reading it in more of a scholarly fashion than they used to. I recommend a few resources for people to read along with:

1. The Faithlife Study Bible. This is filled with tons of notes on nearly every passage in the Bible, written by a bunch of great scholars. You can find a physical copy, or you can just download the Faithlife Study Bible app. https://apps.apple.com/…/faithlife-study-bible/id485998842

2. The Bible Project: Tim Mackie and Jon Collins do a terrific job of making heavy scholarship applicable to people all across the board. Watch their videos or listen to their podcasts every week or two and you’ll be miles ahead of the average Bible reader. https://bibleproject.com

3. Inspired Imperfection by Greg Boyd: If you’re looking for some good rules on how to understand and read your Bible in a better Christ-focused way, check out this book. https://www.amazon.com/Inspired…/dp/150645562X/

4. For some more thoughts on this subject, I’ve written more on my blog here: https://jaminbradley.com/…/incorrectly-correct-bible…/