In the next several blog posts I want to talk about how you can come to understand the Bible.

First, you need to know that you can understand the Bible. Too often in churches Bible study is seen as an occupation for a few smart, well-educated men. These men get the church platform and use big words like exegesis and immutable, which make understanding the Bible seem out of reach for normal folk. But take heart. The Bible is a simple book, written for poor uneducated people who can’t read. After all, the literacy rate of the areas that Paul was writing to was less than 20%. These big words that are used in the thick books in the bookstores aren’t used in the Bible. The Bible uses words like shepherd, warrior, father, husband, etc to describe God not omniscient or immutable. These are ideas that even the simplest person can understand. Once you realize that the Bible wasn’t mainly written for the guys at Harvard a barrier is removed. Housewives, construction workers, and scholars can all understand the Bible.

Next let’s talk about why you would want to spend the time required to learn the Bible. After all there are a lot of other things you could be doing with your time. The main reason to learn the Bible is to get God’s view of reality and thereby live and worship rightly. It is not so you can be your church’s Bible answer man and get a big ministry so your life can be finally be worth something. Since God is holy (different) we need God to tell us what he is like and what is really true.

What God says is true and what the world says is true are more or less opposite each other. Since we live in the world and have flesh we can’t help taking some of the world’s thoughts into our minds. Therefore we need to read the Bible until what God says is true seems more real and important to us than what the world’s says is real and important. This takes time. We have sixteen hours in the day in which we take in advertisements and television shows and the news. We can’t help being influenced by these things. “That car looks so cool I need one.” “Those people are getting drunk and sleeping around and look how much fun they are having. It can’t be that wrong.” “That guys a terrible person and look how successful he is.” Left uncorrected these influences dull our sense of right and wrong and lead to ruin. We have to come regularly to the Bible to remind ourselves of what really matters and what the end of the things the world clings to is.