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Biblical illiteracy is at an all time high in The United States Of America. There is a bit of irony here as God’s word is more accessible than it has ever been. Bit only are there more English translations than we need being sold anywhere books are sold, but there are Bible apps for our smart phones. Not only that, but you don’t even need an app like YouVersion or The Bible App, or Logos Bible Software. You have many English translations available for free on BibleGateway.com. From Genesis to Revelation, you can pull up the text of scripture for free and read the entire thing from beginning to end. And just to make things even better, Bible Gateway has even put AUDIO versions of The Bible on their website which, again, you can listen to for free.

So why? Why aren’t people reading their Bibles? Why is it so hard for both Christians and Non-Christians to read this book that has shaped western civilization and which, as I have made a case for elsewhere on this site, has come from the God of the universe? (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Well, in this article, I want to respond to things I’ve heard people say about The Bible, and I also want to give a strategy for getting into The Bible if you are a beginner. But first…

Why Is It Important That We Read The Bible?

You cannot have a relationship with God without some level of Bible reading and study. This isn’t legalism, but a recognition that a relationship where you do all the talking isn’t a healthy one. Prayer is you talking to God, scripture is the way God talks back (some would say the only way, but at minimum is primary).

And if you really get immersed, The Holy Spirit can really use what you’ve learned I. I recall one time being in a deep depression. As I was pouring out my heart to God, I kept having passage after passage come to mind, and I would jump to them in my Logos app. I would read and comment on the passage and all of a sudden, I realized I was essentially preaching to myself (Psalm 42:5). I realized at that moment, this was a two way conversation about what I was going through. Although it was a dark episode of my life, I actually look back on that incident with a rather fondness. In recounting this story to others, I have referred to it as “My Bible Study With God”.

God doesn’t just speak through scripture when you read it. God speaks through scripture even when you’ve not a single Bible in front of you. There is a book called “God doesn’t whisper.” I’m not sure that’s not true. I think he does, but he uses the language of The Holy Bible when he does. I want to go deeper into my study of God’s word. It doesn’t matter if I become a scholar or not. As long as I hear Him speak.

Here are some passages for you to look up;

Deuteronomy 8:3, Psalm 119, 2 Timothy 3:16-17, Matthew 4 compared with Ephesians 6:17 (in the context of Ephesians 6:12-17).

If you look these passages up, you’ll understand a little of what scripture teaches about itself, in other words, scripture’s doctrine of scripture. In Deuteronomy 8:3b, we read “Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” (NIV). In Matthew 4, Jesus quoted this passage when Satan tempted him to break his fast during Jesus’ 40 day testing in the desert. When Satan said “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus responded “It is written ‘Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (NIV). Jesus fought the devil off by quoting the word of God, believing the word of God, and applying the word of God (I.e living it out). Since as 1 Peter 5:8 says, “The devil roams the earth like a lion, searching for souls to devour.” It would behoove us to be able to combat him. In Ephesians 6:10-17, the Apostle Paul describes The Armor Of God. At the very end of his listing of armor pieces, he mentions “The Sword Of The Spirit which is the word of God.” If you read the entire passage, you will see that this is the only offensive part of the armor there is. Everything else is defensive (e.g The Shield Of Faith, The Breastplate Of Righteousness). Jesus fought the devil and he lived to tell because he was armed with the sword of the Spirit. The devil is the father of lies (John 8:44), God’s word is truth (John 17:17), and so it makes sense that God’s word would be the most effective weapon against him. In Psalm 119, the Psalmist has a lot to say about the importance of God’s word including it being able to keep a man’s way pure (Psalm 119:9, 11) and being a lamp unto one’s feet and a light for his path (Psalm 119:105). When do you use lamps? In the darkness, When I read Psalm 119:105, I imagine a person holding a lantern walking through a dark forest that is full of dangerous creatures that threaten to pounce, and full of obstacles that can entangle one’s feet and make them stumble and get injured. But with a lamp, you can see where you are going. You have a full view of what lies before you. It seems to me that a knowledge of God’s word is important! The biblical authors, themselves beneficiaries of earlier divine revelation, certainly seemed to think so.

Obstacle 1: The Bible Is Too Hard To Understand

I recently heard someone say that The Bible was just too hard to understand. Given all the commentaries written on different books, different denominations, theological debates between Christians, and so on. I can understand how one might get that impression. Why would I need to reach a bunch of different commentaries by different biblical scholars of different theological backgrounds when I could just pick up a Bible and just read it straight through??

The thing is; The Bible is both difficult and incredibly easy to understand. This isn’t a contradiction because the things that are easy to understand and the things that require doing a little homework are not the same parts of the text. I heard a preacher years ago say “The main things are the plain things and the plain things are the main things.” This is a doctrine that the reformers called “The perspecuity of scripture”. This doctrine pertains to things that you have to believe in order to be saved, and to live a good godly life. No Greek or Hebrew necessary, no ANE or Second Temple Jewish context necessary either. For example, let’s take Genesis 1 as an example. Genesis 1 is one of the most debated passages in the entirety of scripture. There’s about 10 different interpretations of this one verse. ^[1]If you want to know what interpretation of Genesis 1, see my article “Genesis 1: Functional Origins, Temple Inauguration, and Anti-Pagan Polemics“. That said, anyone who reads this passage can be assured of this; God created everything. God created time, the sun, moon, and stars. God created the sea and all that is them. God created land animals. And God created humans in his own image. Image of God? What’s that? That requires you do some homework. But anyone can see that it means humans are special in some way. They were created to be in a relationship with their Creator. That’s the essential takeaway of Genesis 1. The length of the days, whether the days happened chronologically, whether or not there is a cosmic temple motif (which there is) are all secondary details.

The deity of Christ is another example. In John 1, we read “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:1-5, 14, ESV).

It is abundantly clear that Jesus is God, and yet Jesus is in some sense distinct from God The Father. John explicitly says “The Word was with God” and “The Word was God” and “through him, all things were made“. In saying that The Word became flesh, John is saying that God became man. Here you have some crucial ingredients that make up The Doctrine of The Trinity. Jesus is God, but he’s distinct from the Father. You also have the doctrine of the Incarnation, which we are about to celebrate as of the time of writing this. Of course, there are questions and objections around these doctrines, and those interested can check out my videos “Is The Doctrine Of The Trinity Logically Coherent?” And “Is The Doctrine Of The Incarnation Logically Coherent?” But what I am saying here is that the meaning of the text is clear. So clear, in fact, that the Jehovah’s Witnesses had to make their own translation of The Bible and basically rewrite this portion of scripture to downplay the deity of Jesus. ^[2]For people wanting a good interaction with Watchtower apologetics, see my articles “Why You Should Believe In The Trinity: Respoonding To The WatchTower (Part 1)“, “Why You Should … Continue reading

And so, “The main things are the plain things and the plain things are the main things.” That God created the universe and that Jesus is God made flesh are a couple of the main things. The latter, because Jesus himself said “I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.” (John 8:24, ESV).

St. Jerome once said “The Scriptures are shallow enough for a babe to come and drink without fear of drowning and deep enough for a theologians to swim in without ever touching the bottom.” ^[3]St. Jerome. Quote from AZQuotes.com. Accessed December 23rd 2024. — https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1406540

I have found this to be true throughout my 15 years of studying The Bible.

Obstacle 2: The Bible Is Too Long

Although it might be surprising to hear, I once was among those who just couldn’t bring themselves to read The Bible. I didn’t particularly like to read as a teenager, and The Bible was just a thick book. “You mean I have to read all that?” Never mind memorizing it and properly exegeting it, I’d be lucky if I could read the whole thing. Especially since Leviticus is almost universally acknowledged as the most boring book of The Bible.

While I can’t do anything to shorten The Bible (nor would I even if I could), what I can do is tell you what worked for me; familiarize yourself with The Bible’s historical narratives in some way other than reading a regular Bible. After you have some basic familiarity with “the story”, get a real Bible and go through that. Having been in the kiddie pool, you’ll be more comfortable going into deeper waters. Basically, I’m saying to find your “gateway drug” into Bible study. In my case, my gateway drug was Tyndale’s Manga Bible series. This was a multi-volume manga series drawn by actual Japanese manga artists and produced in multiple languages. Manga Mutiny, Manga Melech, and Manga Messengers covers The Old Testament. Manga Messiah, Manga Metamorphosis, and Manga Majesty cover The New Testament. I was (and still am) a huge weeb. ^[4]This is slang for people who are super into anime and manga. And so, reading The Bible’s stories in a manga format was a lot more inviting than my Mom’s old King James.

Alternatively, you could pick yourself up a copy of “The Story: The Bible As One Continuing Story Of God and His People“.

Alternatively, you could read extremely readable translations like The New Living Translation or The Living Bible. We’ll talk more about translations in the next section, but if you remember hearing The Bible in a certain translation and it was the Shakespearean language that threw you off, these may be a breath of fresh air.

My hope is that you get a taste of God’s word through these other mediums. These aren’t substitutes for a proper Bible, but their purpose is to help you get a lay of the land.

Another great way is to study it in an expository way in a group. This is what my church’s Sunday School class does at Powdersville First Baptist Church. Before regular service, there are several classes being taught by different people. The class I attend is taught by Pastor Miles Bridges. Since I’ve attended, we have gone through Hebrews and Hosea, and currently we are going through John 4. If you can find a church that does this kind of thing, with reputable teachers, it would be great. Miles’ class aren’t mini sermonettes, but highly interactive classes. You can ask questions, and really just grow as you go through books in community.

Obstacle 3: What Translation Should I Choose?

Back in the old days, you had The ye old King James Version and….that’s it. Nowadays you have the NKJV, the NIV, the ESV, the NASB, the CSB, and on and on the list goes. The new Bible student might wonder why we have so many English translations, what is the difference between them, and which one he should choose? To an extent, I agree with the remark of the late Bible Scholar Michael S. Heiser, that the best Bible is “The one you will read“. Because almost all current English translations ^[5]I’m saying “Almost” because I am keeping perverted cult translations like The New World Translation that The Watchtower Society produced. are good and pretty accurate translations. The differences between them are so minute that it doesn’t really matter, not for the people who this blog article is aimed at anyway.

But why are there so many translations? Well, you see, different translation committees have different philosophies on how the text should be translated. For example, is it more important to get as close of a word-for-word translation as possible, or is it more important to translate the content of the author’s thoughts? The most rigid word-for-word translations would be translations like the English Standard Version (ESV), while on the other end of the spectrum, you have “Paraphrase” translations like “The Living Bible”. And in between would be translations like The New Living Translation (NLT) which is less paraphrase-ish than The Living Bible but is still heavily thought for thought. Then you have my favored translation; The New International Version (NIV). The New International Version is a hybrid between word-for-word and thought-for-thought. In other words, it stays word-for-word unless the translators feel that readability or understandability would be sacrificed, in which case they will result to translating the thought. How the ESV and NIV translate 1 John 2:2 is a good case in point. The ESV reads “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” Propiti-what? That isn’t exactly a phrase we use in our day to day lives. So the NIV renders it this way; “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” You can see that they almost read the same, but where the ESV has “propitiation”, the NIV has “Atoning Sacrifice”. This is what John means as he refers to Jesus in this verse.

For advanced students like myself, I think word-for-word translations are probably the best. But if you’re new to The Bible, you may want to get your feet wet with The Living Bible or the NLT. My first real Bible was an NLT, but I moved on to the NIV after a few reads.

A word of caution; there is a fringe Christian group called the “KJV Onlyists”. They argue that any English translation other than the King James Version is a legitimate translation to read. Don’t listen to them. If you are interested in why KJV Onlyism is nonsense, I recommend James White’s book “The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust Modern Translations?”

Conclusion

I hope this blog post has been helpful to you. It is my prayer that you will not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. I myself had to overcome The Bible barrier. It might hard to believe given how much of a bibliophile I am, but if I could overcome it, you can too. And who knows? You may get so into it that like yours truly, you might entertain thoughts of becoming a biblical scholar for a career.