The Bible isn’t a Fortune Cookie

In many ways, reading the bible can be a challenge.  Perhaps, finding ourselves in a moment of crisis and feeling like we have nowhere else to turn, we crack open this dusty old book in hopes of finding words of comfort, and instead we find:

"From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. “Get out of here, baldy!” they said. “Get out of here, baldy!” He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys." (2 Kings 2:23-24)

Maybe we want to grow in prayer or we have a hard time focusing at Mass (especially during the homily), so we once again turn to the scriptures...now we find:

“And there was a young man named Eutychus sitting on the window sill, sinking into a deep sleep; and as Paul kept on talking, he was overcome by sleep and fell down from the third floor and was picked up dead.” (Acts 20:9-10)

This isn’t looking promising.  

We hear so often how the scriptures are the word of God, so shouldn’t reading these words somehow give us a kind of immediate religious experience, a mystical or transcendent moment of union with God? 

Approaching the bible from this perspective will ultimately lead to frustration because it loses sight of why we have these books and what their ultimate purpose is meant to be for those reading them.  

As with all things in our world, in order to properly understand them,  we have to see the Sacred Scriptures through a lens of love.  The Catechism even tells us, "In the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven comes lovingly to meet his children, and talks with them" (CCC 104).  When we read the bible in its proper context (as a meeting between us and our loving God) the words on the page can be read within the right context - a loving context of a self-communicative God who wants us to be in relationship with Him.   We can learn to hear His voice - to know His language of love.

Resorting to reading the bible only when we are in a moment of crisis or thinking that simply reading the words will lead us to a new way of living strikes me less as a relationship and more akin to opening a fortune cookie.  We read the words, they make little sense, and then we quickly move back to whatever entertainments typically pre-occupy our thoughts. 

To be clear - God can absolutely work through someone opening to a random passage in scripture.  St. Augustine, one of the Church’s greatest Saints, can surely attest to that fact; however, what began as a “random” reading of scripture led to Augustine’s deep love of the word of God, leading to many commentaries and homilies that are still valuable for us today.  If we want to truly have a deep and intimate relationship with our God, reading scripture cannot be used only as a last resort or done without the proper relational context.  

Relationships take time - they take work.  If we truly want to be able to pray with and understand the scriptures in their proper context (that is, a relational context), we have to spend time with the word of God, researching difficult to understand passages and allowing His word to speak to us as a loving Father desires to speak to his children.  

Fortunately, as we do not know how to pray as we ought (Romans 8:26), the Love of God, the Holy Spirit comes to our aid.  The Holy Spirit inspires the authors of Sacred Scripture and when we invite Him into our time reading passages of the bible, we can be better equipped with this relational lens that is so necessary to properly understand the greater context of the word of God.  

Practices such a Lectio Divina or Ignatian contemplation can provide a helpful framework for more fully entering into that relational reading of scripture.  These ancient practices allow the words of scripture to come alive as they give us the space to hear how God is speaking to us through the words, phrases, and scenes of the bible.  Apps like Hallow are great when beginning to learn to pray with scripture as they provide a recorded Lectio that guides you through a passage, giving you the time to truly enter into a time of prayer with a text that may have once felt obscure or so difficult to read.  

The Sacred Scriptures are truly a gift of encounter when read within the proper relational context.  If we try to violently separate the relationship from the text, all that we will have left is a dead letter.  Instead of reading scripture like a fortune cookie or a series of disconnected quotes, we can experience it to be more like a little Christmas everytime we turn the page.  As the Word of God took on flesh and came into this world, in scripture, we see the word of God wrapped in human language so that we can hear the loving voice of our Father. 

Ultimately, if we do find ourselves struggling or want to lean into a desire to pray, we can always ask ourselves, “How is God communicating His love for me in this passage?”  Obviously some passages require greater surrounding context than others, but the underlying principle remains the same - the word of God is meant to be a meeting place between you and God - a place to learn His language and how He speaks to you, how He communicates His love for you.