Why Don’t We Read the Bible More?
I found the results of a recent poll about patterns of reading the Bible fascinating, discouraging, and not unexpected all at the same time. In short, the survey, conducted by the Barna Group on behalf of the American Bible Society, discovered that while Americans have a very high view of the Bible, they don’t read it much.
As an article put out by the Religious News Service describes it,
More than half of Americans think the Bible has too little influence on a culture they see in moral decline, yet only one in five Americans read the Bible on a regular basis, according to a new survey….
The survey showed the Bible is still firmly rooted in American soil: 88 percent of respondents said they own a Bible, 80 percent think the Bible is sacred, 61 percent wish they read the Bible more, and the average household has 4.4 Bibles.
But, as the survey demonstrated, whatever high view Americans may hold about the Bible, it doesn’t translate into the actual practice of reading it:
If they do read it, the majority (57 percent) only read their Bibles four times a year or less. Only 26 percent of Americans said they read their Bible on a regular basis (four or more times a week).
So here’s my question to you: do you read the Bible? If so, how often? If infrequently, why not more?
I’ve said for years that Lutherans – and I suspect this holds true for Presbyterians, Methodists, and Episcopalians and other “mainline” church-goers – know two things for sure about the Bible. 1) It’s a very important book, and 2) they don’t know it very well. Combining these two things has created a reservoir of embarrassment and even shame in many Christians. Which is why a well-meaning invitation to Bible study has frightened more than a few of our folks from getting more involved in church. As adults, we like being good at things and are remarkably uncomfortable when we feel we lack competence. Hence, whether it’s taking dancing lessons at the request of a partner, learning to shoot digital photography, starting a foreign language, or reading the Bible, we shy away from situations where we think we may be embarrassed.
So what makes you reticent to pick up one of the 4.4 Bibles probably lying around your house? Is it too big, too foreign, too irrelevant, too daunting, what? Or, perhaps more importantly, what would entice you to pick it up? Better education at church, online resources, brief videos that help explain the Bible and set it in context? Other things?
I’m interested to know because I’m committed to helping everyday Christians read and enjoy the Bible more. In fact, I think if we don’t teach the emerging generation to read the Bible in a way that helps them use these stories to make sense of and shape their lives, I’m not sure we have much of a future…or deserve one. In 2009 I published a book called Making Sense of Scripture
So if you have a moment, I’d love to hear what has been challenging, enjoyable, daunting or helpful as you try to read and understand “the greatest story ever told.”
These findings are not surprising. But I often find myself asking, “Which is worse–not reading the Bible, or interpreting the Bible terribly?” I am frequently disheartened by the way people who do read the Bible interpret and use it.
One thing that has helped me to stay with the Bible over the years is breaking free of certain doctrines about Scripture. No longer a functional inerrantist, I now feel free to wrestle with biblical texts. Instead of trying to harmonize disparate understandings of God, I am now able to admit some discontinuity, even interpreting some passages as correcting other passages.
I suspect many people try to read the Bible only to give up when they find that they don’t know what to do with a wrathful deity who seems to favor a particular people-group, who is mollified by animal sacrifice, and who sanctions genocide. They have not been equipped with the hermeneutical skills needed to make sense of the biblical story as a whole.
I’ve found using The Bible app, along with the many devotional or reading plans makes it easy to keep up with daily Bible reading. It’s free, has dozens of translations and reading plans for all walks of life. AND, you can set a daily reminder.
Sometimes it just takes a word! Back when I was about 21 or so, a woman at the church said during a women’s group meeting”When I last read the Bible all the way through…”. It took me totally by surprise that anyone would read the whole Bible through! So I made a commitment to myself that I would read it all the way through. The Canadian Bible Society had a “Thorugh the Bible in a year” brochure and I took it and just started. As I read I was ocnstantly surprised to find- Oh! That’s what Jesus was talking about when… or how familiar and yet different the stories were from the shortened and sanitized versions we heard in church. By the time I finished I was no longer surprised (or perhaps not so unsure!) of God’s great mercy and forgiveness for the whole Older Testament is one long saga of God’s forgiveness, discipline and mercy of “poor sinful people”, ordinary people, jsut like me! Since that time I have read it through many times and over the past few years I do it every year. Now, to keep me focused, I choose two or three words or themes to watch for each year and write down where I see them. This year, they are “wait”, fear/worry and related terms, and Day of the Lord. I now find that I have “memorized” by constant usags a lot of the Bible- not intentinally but as a by-product! I highly recommend it! Just give yourself permission to skip a day here or there when you’re tired, and if it takes you two years or three- so what! Just read!
I am in a bible study class, and get great joy from it. We are studying Hebrews, and we read a chapter aloud, and then we all discuss “what it means” and we sometimes have similar interpretations and sometimes different ones, but that’s what makes it interesting! The discoveries are endless.
Being in a bible study class is much more in keeping with what the first century Christians did…I am sure. They met in small groups and discussed things. It is more satisfying than Sundays…to me, anyway.
Pastor Lose, wonderful to see this post this afternoon. I am actually putting the finishing touches on a “MOOC” (probably really a “TOOC” or Tiny Open Online Course) on Making Sense of Scripture for some family and friends before rolling it out to my congregation this summer. I’ll let you and your readers know how it goes. I found MSOS very helpful in clarifying for me what the Bible was, and more importantly wasn’t, and hope to do the same for others, that they might be more apt to pick it up and just read!
We have a hoot in bible study – plus tears and arguments, but mostly laughter. I go weekly – it’s church for me. That said, I don’t read the bible on my own much cuz I find it irrelevant. Not totally irrelevant – but honestly I find the wisdom I need elsewhere. Sorry! And while there are nifty interpretive options to explore, and they are intriguing, in the end so much is about an old sky god – including the New Testament. IMHO, ha ha. I don’t mean to sound arrogant, just honest.
Carol mentioned above that she heard someone read the whole Bible all the way thru. I think that is why people DON’T read the Bible, they feel like failures if they can’t get thru Genesis! Leviticus isn’t overly inspiring reading.
I really think if you have a desire to read the WHOLE Bible then you need to know where to start and have the ability to put things in context.
Maybe the place to encourage people to start is what book do they have the most questions about (other than Revelation!) Have you always wondered about Isaiah for instance? Great, ask around for a good companion commentary that goes with Isaiah. Do the same for any other book your interested in. DON’T be afraid to find someone with some biblical knowledge to ask-answer the tough questions.
The first thing that comes to mind is “relevance”. People don’t have a sense that the Bible is really relevant to their lives right now. And their lives are so full with demands on their time and attention, that the Bible just doesn’t rise to the level of priority where reading it actually gets done.
Perhaps if people understood that the Bible is THEIR story too. The Israelites understood that the Torah was the story of their people–devout religious Jews today still understand this. But I think it’s easy for Christians (especially those who don’t read the Bible regularly) to see this as “someone else’s story” or “some good moral stories from the distant past”. But the Bible IS our story. And it can change our lives, if we open ourselves to it.
Dr. Lose,
Without the results of the Barna poll, I recently entertained this question from a congregation member. I offered a written response in our newsletter (too long to include here). What I suggest as possible reasons for not reading is irrelevance to the 21st century world, having an inaccessible translation/version, a self-imposed sense of being unqualified to read critically, or the incorrect notion that the Bible was meant to be read from cover-to-cover. Parts of it are just boring, taken at face value (the first few chapters of Numbers comes to mind). Who wants to slog through that?! It can be done, but it makes a mountain of discouragement out of a mole hill of misunderstanding.
My current crop of Confirmands has been invited to read parts of the Daily Lectionary (2-3 readings a week). I provided them booklets with the list, and since September, they still have not done this work. So…how do we build that habit, if they don’t do it voluntarily?
Great questions. I find that most people wouldn’t know what to do with the book even if they picked it up. They need someone to show them the way. We have no lack of resources available (Bible study guides, etc.), but I’ve seen people get most excited when we get together, crack it open, read it, and discuss it.
On a more mundane level: why are Bibles still mostly bound in black, the colour we associate with death and mourning — sad and serious stuff? Admittedly, at confirmation and other important occasions we give really fancy Bibles that are not necessarily black (often white). But these are very opulently bound with embossed leather bindings, gold lettering, and other relics of bygone days, such that the poor recipients need to feel awfully devout and good and will want to wash their hands thoroughly before opening the book that brings good news. Rather give a paperback Bible and encourage the recipient to write notes in the margins, highlight passages that strike them, dog-ear the pages, use whatever comes to hand as bookmarks, and buy a new copy when it’s been read to bits.
I usually read my bible along with the Portals of Prayer, or Christ in our Family. I have read the bible other times also, but it is hard for me to concentrate on the contents as I read it. I was raised in a Lutheran atmosphere, and I feel that it should be read on a regular basis. But how can we really get into it if we have a problem grasping what is written? I know that it’s that way with me.
Funny, because I’m an atheist who doesn’t even believe Jesus was a historical person and I have two Bibles, a Book of Mormon, and the Quran.
I suspect people don’t read the Bible because they’re incapable of understanding most of it (most people who read it don’t understand it any better). I’ll have to agree with Hector Avalos: the Bible is basically irrelevant. It’s like the Illiad, only not as well written or conherent (though the Bible still beats the Quran for sense). A knowledge of real ancient history (as well as what’s wrong with Biblical mythic ‘history’) is necessary to understand what is comprehensible, and much of it has been edited into nonsense and is composed of unrelated fragments.
If the was no God, there would be no atheists.
There is a God, thus, we have atheists.
R.J., I couldn’t understand my Bible either although I tried many times. I could read pages and didn’t have a clue what I read…… until I accepted Jesus as my Savior and received the gift of the Holy Spirit…then miraculously, I could understand it! It’s a spiritual book and is spiritually discerned, and without the Holy Spirit we can’t understand it. I’ve been a daily Bible reader for 12 years now, and I read it cover to cover…and then read it again. I never cease to be amazed at how things I didn’t see before are revealed to me. I told God when I started that I would believe every word as truth until it proved to be a lie….and I told Him that if I read something that disagreed with my mind, I would change my thinking since He is perfect. Best decision I ever made!
It is in the Bible.
You forget my words, I will forget your children.
They love to be ignorant.
Do not add to my words.
They are all mad, they think they are all prophets.
They are obstinate.
They did not harken to the voice of their teachers.
I love them that love me.
I loved Jacob and hated Esau.
All Gods words are pure.