In the new year, the BibleProject invites you to love the life of the mind.
Becoming better readers of the Bible means learning how to read with our whole selves. But learning this means we may have to break some deeply set habits of approaching Scripture. Our culture has quietly taught us to live as partial-persons, either emphasizing our emotive qualities or leaning into our rational side. It’s as if we’re asked to either embody the plot of a feel-good film from the ‘80s (“Trust your feelings!” “Just follow your heart!”) or become some sort of hyper-rational robot, running complex mental analytics and calling it “theology.”
The true call, of course, is to live and read our whole Bible as whole persons. As we’re entering a new year—many of us setting our intentions for going deeper into the Bible’s literature—there’s no better time to consider what it might mean to grow in this way.
Today, let’s consider what it means to deepen our mental habits of Scripture reading without sacrificing the emotive and heartfelt connection that the Bible intends to awaken in us.
The God of the Bible is a God who reveals. This revelation, in the biblical imagination, can be profoundly encountered everywhere. There is no portion of nature, no element of human activity, no place or people where the revelation of God is not active for “those with eyes to see.” One of my favorite descriptions of this comes from the biblical poetry of Psalm 19. Go look it up if you haven’t read it in a while! After a description of the glory of God revealed in the natural world, the poet writes:
The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the decrees of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, ...
from Christianity Today Magazine
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