“For Christians, the reading and study of holy Scripture as our authority in all matters of faith and practice is a core activity, not an add-on. But in our contemporary world, with its proliferating fashions in ‘spirituality,’ more and more people are choosing other authorities and guides to salvation. As up-to-date and attractive as many of these options may appear, we Christians say no to them.
We say no to working ourselves up into visionary states of ecstasy in order to get into touch with God. We say no to undertaking Herculean tasks of moral heroism in order to discover the divine potentialities within us. We say no to going off to a mountain cave and emptying ourselves of all thought and feeling and desire so that there is nothing to keep us from immediate access to Reality. We Christians are sometimes impressed by these spiritual pyrotechnics and on occasion even ‘ooh and ah’ over them. But our wiser guides do not encourage us to pursue them. In contrast to the glamorous spiritualities, ours is a pedestrian way, literally: putting one foot in front of the other as we follow Jesus. In order to know who he is, where he is going and how to walk in his steps, we reach for a book, the book, and read it: holy Scripture.
Historically Christians have been as concerned about how to read the Bible as that we read it. The Christian community as a whole has never assumed that it is sufficient to place a Bible in a person’s hands with a command to read it. That would be as foolish as handing a set of car keys to an adolescent, giving her a Honda and saying, ‘Drive it.’ And just as dangerous. The danger is that in having our hands on a piece of technology, we impose our ignorant or destructive will upon it.
For print is technology. We have God’s Word in our hands, our hands. We can now handle it. It is easy enough to suppose that we are in control of it, that we can manage it, that we can use it and apply it.
There is more to the Honda than the technology of mechanics. And there is more to the Bible than the technology of print. Surrounding the machine technology of the Honda there is a world of gravity and inertia, values and velocity, surfaces and obstructions, Chevrolets and Fords, traffic regulations and the police, other drivers, snow and ice and rain. There is far more to a car than its gearshift and steering wheel. There is far more to driving a car than turning a key in the ignition and stepping on the accelerator. Those who don’t know that are soon dead or maimed.
And those who don’t know the world of the Bible are likewise dangerous to themselves and others. So as we hand out Bibles and urge people to read them, we also say, ‘Caveat lector—let the reader beware.’
Men and women shopping in the marketplace for vegetables and meat, carpets and skirts, horses and automobiles, are warned by their experienced parents and grandparents, ‘Caveat emptor: let the buyer beware.’ The market is not what it seems. More is going on there than a simple exchange of goods. Sellers and buyers don’t operate out of the same mindset. Their intentions are seldom identical. Let the buyer beware.
And let the reader beware. Just having print on the page and knowing how to distinguish nouns from verbs is not enough. Reading the Bible can get you into a lot of trouble. Few things are more important in the Christian community than reading the Scriptures rightly. The holy Scriptures carry immense authority. Read wrongly, they can ignite war, legitimize abuse, sanction hate, cultivate arrogance. Not only can, but have…do. This is present danger.
So caveat lector—let the reader beware. Read, but read rightly. The adverb rightly in this context does not only mean accurately; it means right-heartedly as well as right-mindedly, what the biblical writers referred to as uprightly. Read the Scriptures, not to learn something that will give us an advantage over our nonreading neighbors or an occasional emotional uplift, but in order to live to the glory of God.
It is essential that we round up all the help available in the acquisition of Scripture-reading skills, skills that orient us in the mind and heart of the Bible as well as the words of the Bible, skills that integrate keen minds and devout hearts, that insist that there is no understanding of Scripture that is not at the same time a living of it, that have no interest in exegesis that is not simultaneously holy obedience.”
(Eugene Peterson, “Foreword” in The Act of Bible Reading, ed. Elmer Dyck, pp. 7-9)
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