My dear friend Debra is a voracious reader and one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. She once told me that when she starts a book, she has to finish it – even if she doesn’t like it. No matter how poorly it’s written, how wrong or pointless or depressing it is, she just can’t put a book down without finishing what she started.
Her tenacity astounded me. I rarely meet a book I DO read cover to cover! I could use some of her staying power. And perhaps she could use some of my flexibility, we joke to each other.
Debra and I compliment each other well as we lead a small Bible study group. This fall we’re reading Sacred Rhythms by Ruth Haley Barton. We’re in need of rest instead of rules; refreshing instead of work; and so we are having beautiful conversations about longing (What do I really want?) and waiting (How long must I wait to find it?) and trusting (Surely He knows and He is good?). Ruth tells us her own journey of seeking and finding an authentic faith structured by several spiritual disciplines that lead to growth.
Chapter 2 is about reading Scripture as a spiritual practice. The title made me wince, but I kept reading because I had to lead the study.
The Bible and I are complicated these days. It’s become one of the books I put down in the middle. I begin to read a passage and at first I find the familiar comfort, but then something triggers me and I feel I just can’t go on. I walk away in frustration. I see two main reasons for these reactions. Perhaps you can relate:
- Same reason I put down a bad piece of fiction: it’s depressing, unjust, full of idiots, frustrating, unresolved, overly used, poorly or wrongly interpreted, used against me, etc etc.
- My real life experience just doesn’t line up with so many statements in the Bible.
But Ruth reminds me I can read scripture for relationship, too; I can encounter the Bible as a conversation. God gets to talk, and then I get to talk, too. I’d forgotten this somehow. It makes a lot of sense, actually: the Word of God is living and active and the whole point of it is to be transformed into the image of God. It stands to reason that reading scripture ought to promote an honest and intimate relationship with God. Ruth explains the practice of Lectio Divina as a way to read scripture for relationship.
Enter: Lectio Divina
In this ancient practice of Divine Reading, a short passage is read several times slowly, with pauses in between to consider. The first pass is a general overview, then the reader begins to pay attention to words or phrases that stand out, asking, “what is in my life right now that needs to hear this?” By readings three and four, the heart has had an opportunity to voice its own thoughts and feelings about the text. God and the reader give each other space to say what needs to be said, and trust each other. Whether the questions raised in the reading are resolved or not, we can take with us what is helpful, and continue to wrestle with what is true.
This means that when I come to a verse and immediately question if it’s really true, instead of ignoring my feelings or lived experience, now I get to be heard! Instead of putting the book down in the middle because I disagree with it, I stay with it a little while longer.
It’s becoming a lost art, this act of staying in the middle of a disagreement. Of living with tension. Cancel culture has gotten under my skin. Where is mediation and working through hard things together? Where is the art of asking good questions, and listening well? What about vulnerability and honesty? If I can’t do this with God, I doubt I can do it well with anyone else.
I have learned to be honest with God this way in prayer, but not so much in reading the Bible. Lectio Divina is not new to me. However Ruth has opened up something new for me in her approach that I believe will be helpful for many. I’ll sum it up this way:
It’s impossible to be transformed by the Word
without first being honest with it.
And guess what?
God wants us to be honest with it!
So I am giving Lectio Divina another go, with this in mind: If I have a disagreement or negative feeling upon reading a verse, God and I can talk about that and work through it together. He’s humble and approachable like that! He isn’t trying to win every disagreement. He isn’t interested in controlling me or forcing me to blindly believe. He’s interested in helping me understand His heart AND my own heart, because He cares about me. God wants to be in relationship with the real me, even more than I want to be in relationship with the REAL God.
A Spacious Approach to the Bible
American Evangelicalism has trained us to get preached at, believe it and obey it. Period. Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only. Trust and obey, it’s the only way. I learned at a young age that there is nothing in between the hearing and the obeying; it is sinful to doubt or question the Bible. I must simply obey the truth. And the truth is whatever the preacher says is the truth. This tends to create a culture of celebrity pastors, top-heavy discipleship, group-think, sexism, power over, naive followers, a lack of critical thinking, fear, burnout, behavior modification without heart-change, and more. It’s also what makes spiritual abuse possible.
So this idea that we have permission to talk back to the Bible and be completely honest with it is radical. But guess what – it’s not heretical! It’s not disobedience. It’s actually the type of spirituality the Jewish religious community praised. Did you know in Biblical times, the best students of the Torah were the ones with the most questions – not the most right answers? Hebrew scholars’ highest response to scripture is to wrestle with it and discuss different interpretations. This engagement with this text is actually leaning in, not heretical doubting. It’s drawing near to God, wanting to understand Him better, and wanting to be heard. Wanting to work through it with Him and bring my whole self to the relationship. How can we be in an intimate, transforming relationship with someone who makes no room for vulnerability and feelings? How can we trust someone who expects blind and mute obedience?
There is a whole lot of space and conversation in between the hearing and the obeying.
God is comfortable with this space. I believe He invites us into it and enjoys wrestling with us!
Deconstructing the Teachings of Men
Here’s my new (very old) approach to reading the Bible: When the interpretation I’ve always assigned to the verse bothers me, I pause and notice that. Instead of tapping out, I remain. Perhaps there is a really good reason it bothers me. Perhaps all my pastors through the years have misinterpreted it. Perhaps I’ve experienced some bad fruit from that interpretation. Laying aside all the opinions of man, what is God really wanting to say about Himself here? Why should I hold the interpretations of men higher than the intentions of the heart of God? Often my problem is not with what the Word means, but what other people say the Word means, or how they use their interpretation to their advantage and others’ disadvantage. This is not how God intended His word to be used. And yet it has harmed my heart. God cares about me and you. He doesn’t use the truth as a weapon against us; He is not like men. He wants to hear about our wounds. He wants to help us detach from bad interpretations. He wants to come gently restore the places where men have gotten in the way and twisted what God intended to be pure.
Through this process I can discover many things: where I’ve gotten stuck in the deconstruction phase, who I need to forgive, what I’ve gotten wrong, what I need to set aside, what I’m truly longing for, what I’ve assigned to God that is actually man’s problem, where I’ve been disappointed, what losses I still need to grieve, where I need clearer eyes to see what is true and what is not, how God might be inviting me into something… the list goes on. This is good work.
Braving the Wilderness
And when the passage doesn’t line up with my lived experience, I am free to voice my disappointment, anger, or questions to God. The Word speaks, I thoughtfully take it in, and then I get to speak, too! My feelings are valid to God. And it’s helpful to become more aware of the internal movements in my soul. I read Psalm 116:1, “I love the Lord because He heard my cry,” and notice the emotions it raises in me. I respond honestly, “This verse promises me you hear me when I cry out to you, but right now I see no evidence that you’re listening.. It’s hard to love you when you won’t answer me and I feel invisible to You. I’m just not sure what I think about You right now, God. When are you going to show up already?”
The point of Lectio Divina is not to resolve all my beefs with scripture. It’s mostly to air them. Just like when I feel better after going to therapy, because I finally said the things I thought I wasn’t allowed to say.
And when I choose to stay, this opens the door for true transformation. When I choose to be honest, I learn it’s okay to bring my whole self to the relationship. God’s not going anywhere. I believe God would rather me stay and argue with Him than walk away. God can handle my questions. The truth will hold. In the meantime, as I wrestle, the truth can do a work in me, strengthen me, cause me to walk with a limp, help me know when to let go and trust.
And even though this book I’m reading can make me depressed or anxious or frustrated by all these dumb characters who can’t see all the mistakes they’re making… Even though the plot thickens and the heroine is in big trouble and it seems like no one is making things right even though everyone else who’s read it keeps telling me it’s all going to be made right…
The story’s not over yet.
What God is writing in our hearts and with our lives… the ways He is working behind the scenes to turn the mess of men into something good…
I’m halfway through but I am not going to give up on this book. I’m going to keep reading and keep living because the story’s not over yet.