Reading to Win
The first time I read the Bible it was to win a fight.
Okay, so it wasn’t the very first time I read the Bible, but it was the first time I read the Bible paying really close attention to the words, themes, and overall concepts contained in it. It was the first time I read the Bible with an eye to see how all those little segments called verses connected together across all those larger segments called books.
I wanted to prove to my best friend what I already knew:
I’m just as much a Christian as he is.
My friend had told me that my church wasn’t a real church, that I had never actually been baptized, and that we were supposed to take communion weekly. Needless to say, I had to read a lot of different sections of the Bible to keep up with the conversation.
A few things ended up happening as a result of all this reading:
- My faith in Christ became my own
- I realized the Bible was more than a book to fight about
- The relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament baffled me
My Faith Became My Own
My parents never forced me to read the Bible, but I remember my mother explaining to me how books, chapters, and verses worked so I could turn to a particular passage if it was read during church. When I was arguing with my friend as a teenager he kept giving me all these lists of verses that seemed to prove his point. They took me all over the place in the Bible. Sometimes the verses he gave me made sense, but other times they seemed plucked out of context to suit his needs. The more I read, though, the more context I picked up. I realized at some point that I wasn’t reading for my parents or for my friend—I was reading because I was swept up in what God was revealing about himself to all mankind. Beyond that, I was reading because what God was saying to all mankind had something to do with me. At that point my faith became my own.
More Than a Book to Fight About
Instead of arguing about the Bible, I began to see myself in it. Scripture acted like a mirror. It showed me some things about who I am: fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14), made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27), a sinner saved by grace (Romans 3:23), a saint dressed in the righteousness of Christ made to worship God (Revelation 7:14-15). Some of these things were comforting, others were scary. But I found that the more I applied my mind and heart to understanding the Bible life became richer—and also more questions piled up in my mind. They were the kind of questions every person asks when they’re in a growth spurt.
That Baffling Old Testament
After reading and growing for several years I never came to a satisfying theory about how the Old Testament related to the New Testament. No church that I attended was able to really put it in context in a way that made sense. I just tried not to use the Old Testament very much to make any points about what it meant to live as a Christian. It was about ten years after I had started taking the Bible seriously that I found myself in a church Sunday School class that started to address this in a coherent way. (We read the book The Ancient Love Song by Charles Drew, which I recommend especially if you like the story of Joseph in Genesis! You can borrow it from my library if you like.) I came to realize the truth of an old saying: the Bible is a river shallow enough for a child wade in but also a river deep enough for an elephant to swim in.
At the end of all this I must tell you my need to prove how Christian I was to my friend fell by the wayside. In fact early on, we quit fighting over the Bible and we started praying together, going to Bible studies and youth group together. We started praying for our friends and even our teachers that they would come to know Jesus.
We were also there for each other as we made a lot of mistakes growing up. He was also my best man when I married Gina, and I was his best man too. At the center of our conversation was always God’s Word—teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training us in righteousness that we would grow up complete and equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
My prayer today is that you find God’s Word working similarly in your life.
In Him,
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