Word up

I've been thinking a lot about devotional practices and scripture lately.  I grew up in an environment (church and school, at least; there was a lot more grace at home) in which having a daily "quiet time" was considered as important as breathing or eating...and if you weren't doing so, then you were a sinner who probably wasn't saved.  PROVE your salvation; read the Bible in the most slavishly literal way possible!  Then, go vote Republican, wisely invest your money, and live a nice, plastic middle class existence because that's what God likes best.


Not surprisingly, my adult life has been a bit of a give-and-take in my trying to come to terms with how best to DO daily devotional practices so that they feel like a joy rather than an item on my "getting to heaven" checklist.  Predictably for a Bible nerd, I've never gotten much out of non-scripture-based devotional practices - I don't dislike things like centering prayer, but they don't do much for me.  I need scripture - even when I'm reading Joshua (my personal vote for "least favorite book in the Bible," as in my eyes it's nothing more than an atrocious record of ancient Israel's version of "manifest destiny," complete with the bloody slaughter of innocents for the crime of being in the Promised Land), I find my own faith nourished by the comfort, and the challenge, offered up by the words of the Bible.


So, then, how to liberate it from "read the Bible because you have to" syndrome?  That was my big issue in college - how can I read this book (that's more than just a book...) when the very act of sitting down with it brings back nothing but bad memories of Kevin, the kid with the world's biggest guilt complex for no good reason?  Finally, I had to cast my devotional reading as being specifically liberational - I had to make a deliberate choice to read the scriptures differently, as a testimony to God's grace revealed in freedom and justice in direct opposition to the legalistic endorsement of the American Dream that I had been told was the "right" way to read the Bible.  It was still a struggle sometimes, but it helped free me from my own mental barriers to reading the scriptures.


Over time, that became less of a struggle, and then I woke up one day and I realized that I was beginning to be almost as doctrinaire in MY reading of the scriptures as those who I'd come to resent for how THEIR reading of the scriptures got shoved down my throat.  I'm perhaps not entirely past that stage, but I decided as a means of working through and past the rigidness, to shift my focus toward getting a sense of the broad sweep of scripture.  After all, I figured, I'm going to be a pastor, right?  I need to read it all!  So, I read a psalm, a chapter of Proverbs, a selection from another Old Testament work, a Gospel selection, and an Epistle selection...every day.  What began as a great means of seeing the sheer sweep of the biblical witness eventually became a speed reading contest, as my schedule stopped allowing me to spend an entire hour a morning in scriptural reflection...unless I started to get up earlier, which, frankly - not gonna happen.  It was like an eating contest - I was gorging myself on the Bible, and it was as much to prove a point ("look how much of the Bible I've read!") as to grow in faith.


So...I stopped that, too.  Now, I read a chapter a day.  I will not let myself read more.  I read it three times - once through normally, the second time while consulting the study notes, and the third time again per normal.  I also read a selection from the Book of Concord, Luther's works, or another spiritually edifying theological work.  And...it's done a lot for me.  It's finally starting to become about faith being fed, about asking questions as I patiently work my way through some of the works I'd just as soon ignore (1st Timothy, anyone?).  I find myself wrestling with what to do with language and images that seem inconsistent with the Gospel, but...I think I'm growing through that.  It's harder to be brash and doctrinaire when you force yourself to read the verses of scripture that we'd rather put in the dark corner of the closet and forget all about, and it's hard to brag about how well you know the Bible when your daily volume of consumption isn't particularly noteworthy.  I'm sure I'll find the pitfall in this devotional style, too, and maybe even fall into it headfirst, but for now...slowly, patiently, and in conversation with the Confessions and other works is just what I need.