Assumptions, Part 1 Daily Bible Reading

"The bible is a book that isn't meant to be read."

Instead, Claudio Oliver insists that the bible is supposed to be heard.  Brian McLaren says "It's not the solitary scholar with furrowed brow, bent over a book in a library, whose approach best resonates with the bible as a [community] library [as opposed to a legal consstitution]; rather, it's a community gathering in which people listen to the Bible being read, then respond and interact with it and with one another.  After all, it's only the last several generations who have lived in a world where Bibles are mass-produced and literacy is the norm instead of the exception."

Advocating for a better way of reading the bible, he asks  "What would happen if we have habitually studied at arm's distance what should really be enjoyed from across the room, or if we have used a microscope when binoculars would have been more appropriate because of our historical and cultural distance from the people who pruduced the texts?"

Besides implying that bible scholars & students may need to alter their approach(es) to biblical study, what does this line of thought say about devotions, in the Western/Evangelical sense? 

After all, a bible verse a day keeps the devil away, right?  What if we have brought all kinds of assumptions into having a relationship with Christ through His indwelling Spirit?

Are devotions really necessary?  If so, should we redefine them?  Share your thoughts.

I'll end with this final quote from the same.

"Again, if we want the Bible to be a constitution, it isn't [consistent throughout to be] enough... Nor is it enough as a road map for successful living, as a set of blueprints for building a life, institution, or nation, or as an "owner's manual" with handy-dandy information guarenteed to make your life run smoothly, all at your fingertips, as easy as one-two-three, yes-sir-ee.  But as the portable library of an ongoing conversations about and with the living God, and as an entree into that conversation so that we actually encounter and experience the living God - for that the Bible is more than enough...

As we begin to try and approach the bible in a way that is different from what has been handed to us, may this approach "not try to put us under the text, as conservatives tend to do, or lift us over it, as liberals often seem to do.  Instead, I hope it will try to put us in the text - in the conversation, in the story, in the current and flow, in the predicament, in the Spirit, in the community of people who keep bumping inot the living God in the midst of their experiences of loving God, betraying God, losing God, and being found again by God..."

[GO TO PART 2]