3
Reasons Bible Reading
Alex Goodwin
Is Hard for You
( and None Are Your Fault )
When I was twenty-three , I threw my Bible across the room . I was going through a difficult time and needed to hear a word from God . I turned to my Bible only to come up empty . Again .
I had grown up in church and heard a million times about how important the Bible is for spiritual growth , but after all this time , it still felt like a strange and foreign object . My confusion and frustration with this seemingly inaccessible book was beginning to turn into apathy toward it .
Do you feel this way about the Bible ? That for all the glowing accolades Christians repeat about it — God-breathed , living and active , a lamp unto our feet — the actual act of reading it is really quite hard ?
If so , you ’ re not alone . And while motivation and attention span may play a role , the much larger culprits at the root of your struggle are the systemic norms that have been baked into modern Western Christianity . We ’ ve inherited these norms , scarcely questioning them , and now face an epidemic of Bible disengagement .
“ Awareness is seventy percent of the solution ,” said Irvine Welsh , so here are three overlooked reasons you may be struggling to read the Bible , along with actions you can take to address them .
1 . Your Bible Isn ’ t Made for Reading
Open up your Bible and just look at it . Imagine you ’ d never seen the inside of one before . Evaluate it as objectively as you can : Is it really made for reading ?
Stark pillars of text , perhaps surrounded by scaffolding of even more text : crossreferences , notes , callout boxes . Chapter and
14