THAT’S NOT IMPRESSIVE
April 28, 2021
Have you ever heard of someone accomplish a feat that isn’t all that impressive? That’s how I feel when people say they read the bible in full. It sounds good and maybe its kinda cool that you read such an immersive book in its entirety, but real talk you don’t get any points for that. I always thought about that rumor that Abraham Lincoln read the entire bible from front and back. I never questioned it back then but now I think of it like “ok what are we supposed to do with that information.”
Everything we was taught in school portrayed Abe Lincoln as a saint but I don’t know about that beloved.
Here’s why reading the bible in its entirety is NOT impressive. The Holy Bible is not your regular book. Its not about a hero’s journey (although some of that is applicable), its not the traditional beginning-middle-end narrative, and its not some science fiction book trying to capture your wildest imaginations. The Bible is a true, instructional book, that is meant to be read NUMEROUS times, not in any particular order. Reading in full means nothing if you don’t read for understanding.
The Bible is a never ending well that you continuously draw from. Before you read you’re supposed to pray for the ability to understand what you read and pray that the words speak to you with full clarity. That is why people read the Bible and then afterwards be like “man what the heck was that about”. It’s because they treated it like Harry Potter instead of a literal life source that gives instructions on how to live through ancient scripture.
If the King James version is too hard for you to understand at the time, you can always try a different translation.
When you read the Bible you should be thinking, How can I internalize this in my heart? What is God trying to say here? What do this story actually mean? How do these principles impact my life? What was the intent behind this? If you don’t feel like the Bible can actually teach you something, it’s no point of reading it. I can understand how people can have random goals like “read the bible completely”.
Nothing is wrong with that I can get how it can be cool to accomplish that and I understand the idea of doing stuff just because you can do it. My problem is don’t think you deserve a cookie or a pat on the back for doing something that really didn’t benefit you because you didn’t have the right heart state behind your actions.
So if reading the bible from front to back is on your to-do-list I’m not telling you to scratch it off. I’m telling you when you accomplish this task (congrats in advance) don’t pop out thinking anyone will be astonished or impressed, because what you did is NOT impressive beloved.
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