How to read the Bible

All too often, we read the Bible in bite-size chunks, hoping that God will have a personal message for us in one of those half-dozen or so verses. There are a number of problems with this: first, it implies that God only speaks to us in some of his word, some of the time, rather than acknowledging that the whole Bible is God's message to us. Second, we fail to see the big picture, and so fail to see the big message.

Having said that, of course it's true that the big picture is made up of small parts, each of which needs to be understood - each word, each sentence, each paragraph has to be understood in order to understand the big message. But then the big message affects the meaning of the words and sentences. (If you like big words, this proces is called the 'hermeneutical circle').

But the point here is that the smaller parts cannot be properly understood without seeing the big message. And I'm not just talking about that familiar thing, 'context'. It's more than that.

Take, for example, Genesis 12-50. There you have the biographies of Abra(ha)m, Jacob and Joseph (amongst others). Have you noticed how similar things happen to each of them? They leave their homeland, quarrel with family members, go to (or towards) Egypt; Abram and Jacob meet their brides at a well, but are childless.; when they finally have a child, their wives argue; they all receive promises of blessing from God. And so on.

But that doesn't mean that it's simply one biography retold 3 times. Each is subtly (and not so subtly) different. And these similarities and differences provide clues to the meaning of Genesis - clues to God's big message for us today.

However... it's not always easy to see this big picture. We're not used to reading in this way. Fortunately there are good books to help us, and I'm now beginning to read through a number of these. It's hard to summarise these new things I'm seeing in Genesis briefly on the blog - you may have to wait for a sermon series - but I may try over the coming days...