Daily Bible Reading

I have a confession to make: eighteen days ago I abandoned my daily Bible reading. I know it was exactly that long because I had been using a computer reading program to keep me accountable. The electronic accountability model had been working; I read through the entire Bible in one year, and I was on a second pass through in a different translation with a different schedule. I had been faltering a little in my regularity, missing a day or two and playing catch-up, but then I stopped altogether.

The shame or guilt or something finally overcame me this morning and I cranked up the computer and opened my Bible study program. I was surprised to find it had been eighteen days; it felt longer. Ironically my delinquency began exactly one week after I had preached a sermon that was heavily loaded with accusations that we Christians don’t read our Bibles often enough. According the the Barna group, the number of Christians who don’t read their Bible more than once a week is alarming, especially in light of the fact that over sixty percent say they want to follow Jesus more closely in their daily lives. The article asks the obvious question: how can one learn to follow more closely without reading the followers’ manual?

In my case the question becomes why I suddenly stopped reading; I know better. I could blame a changed schedule or a series of early morning meetings that pre-empted my reading time. The truth is, however, that I stopped wanting to read because I didn’t like way it was making me feel. I had completed the books of Moses and Joshua and Judges. I was half-way through First Samuel when I quit. My problem was the way my daily reading was conflicting with my daily writing. I am working on a book that explores ways to present the gospel to twenty-first century people. The sometimes violent, seemingly arbitrary way God operated with His people in the Old Testament was upsetting me. How does one make the fire and brimstone God of Mount Sinai relevant today?

The dilemma was beginning to depress me. I was even beginning to wonder if the so-called neo-evangelicals were right to downplay certain aspects of God and elevate others. After all, “God is love” sells much better than “God is wrathful.” The problem is, if you are going to read the Bible consistently, you are going to come to the conclusion that God is wrathful. I don’t particularly like that, and the delicately sensitive, politically correct masses in 2017 certainly won’t like that. I can totally understand why Rob Bell went the way he did. (If you don’t know Bell, read my series of blogs.)

I have come back to the realization that I am not supposed to like or understand everything God has done or will do. I must either believe what the Bible reveals about the Creator, or I must join the moderns and invent my own creator. The second option is even more depressing than trying to explain the God Who Annihilates Canaanites to today’s pagans. The Old Testament is bloody; get over it. The New Testament reveals the culmination of the bloody story. As ugly as it sometimes appears, there is beauty in blood as Crystal Lewis sang, “The cross, stained by blood/ The beauty of the cross/ Healing for the lost/ The cross.”

I suppose God could have reinterpreted the redemption story for every new period in human history in an effort to make it easier to explain, perhaps more palatable. But He didn’t. Nor does He need to, really. The idea that God is sovereign and humans must bow to His will is distasteful to pagans in any age, but well depicted by sacrifice in every age. That God should sacrifice His own Son to bring about the final restitution for human failings is outrageous. That is precisely why we must continue to read our Bibles regularly. God’s ways are not our ways, but God’s way is the only way to ultimate peace and eternal satisfaction. I must keep reading to renew my mind lest I be conformed to the world. Eighteen days was about seventeen days too long for me.