Why Personal Bible Reading Isn't All It's Cracked Up to Be
It is unusual for every Christian to have a personal copy of the Bible, from a historical perspective. We take it for granted that everyone can read their copy of the Bible by themselves so much that we make it an indispensable practice for spiritual health. While I’m all for every follower of Jesus reading their Bibles regularly, and I do so as part of my daily routine, there are some downsides to private Bible reading.
For one thing, all the books of the Bible were written to communities, and the writers assumed they would be read in community. Few people could read in antiquity, and no one had a personal copy of any biblical book, much less all 66 bound together. When the writers addressed the readers as “you,” they used the plural form of the word, which is lost in English. In our individualistic culture, we tend to lose the community aspect of our faith, which can blind us to many meanings in scripture and lead us to distort others.
But it is not just that we need to read our Bibles with our local church community; we need to read it with our global church family to fully understand what God is trying to teach us. Where you stand determines what you can see.
Some years ago, New Testament scholar Mark Allan Powell engaged in a project to see how people from different cultures read scripture.1 The results were eye-opening. Powell asked various groups of people from three very different cultures on three continents to read Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son. Then he asked them to repeat the parable in their own words. It sounded very different depending on the culture of those retelling the story. This led to more follow-up questions.
When Powell asked the readers to describe the reason the younger son was hungry, all the Americans said the younger son went hungry because he wasted his inheritance on foolish living. In effect, he did this to himself. In America’s individualistic culture, that is what we see in the parable. And the poor choices of the main character are certainly a key part of the story.
However, that is not the only factor. When Russians explained why the younger son was hungry, nearly all cited the famine. There is a long history of people dying from a lack of available food in Russia, so that part of the story stood out to them. Lo and behold, that’s part of Jesus’ parable as well. It wasn’t just the actions of the younger son—the context around him played a significant role in his hunger.
Even more surprising to Americans, perhaps, Tanzanians emphasized that “no one gave him anything to eat.” The younger son was allowed to starve in the presence of people who had food. Why didn’t they share their food with him? Hospitality is a core value in most sub-Saharan African cultures. Allowing someone to go hungry is deeply shameful for a community. This, too, is in the parable as Jesus told it. Yet, in America’s individualistic society, Americans can know people are going hungry around us and feel no moral obligation to feed them. We easily assume they are hungry because they made bad choices and conclude it’s not our problem. Jesus’ parable describes a more complex world than that.
Now which culture is reading the story of the Prodigal Son correctly? All of them and none of them. Irresponsibility, plus hard times, plus a shamefully selfish community equals disaster. All the cultures involved see things that are present in Jesus’ story and may miss some other aspects. Yet, the teaching we take away from the story can lead to vast differences in practice. We are blind to much of what is revealed in scripture when we read our Bibles without the help of the larger multi-cultural church.
What we see in the Bible can say as much about us as it does about the Bible. Who we are determines what and how we see to a large degree. Therefore, we need to read scripture in community. But that community needs to be as diverse as the global church, to the degree possible. We need to see the Bible through the eyes of those who differ from us in all manner of ways. Culture, gender, language, social status, age, and historical eras all impact us. We need to read the Bible with our Christian family from centuries ago and from continents apart. We need each other, and God’s word is bigger than what you hear when you read it alone. It’s great to read your personal Bible all by yourself, but it is not sufficient for you to understand all God wants us to know and do.