Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1134. Holy books are not in short supply. Islam has the Quran, Hinduism has the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita, Buddhism has the Pali Canon, and Mormonism has the Book of Mormon, to name only the most obvious examples of the many holy books competing for allegiance around the world today. So what makes…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1132. Wooden literalism is the caricature that gets thrown at every Bible believing Christian sooner or later, usually by someone convinced that anyone who trusts Scripture must also believe the four winds are held by four literal angels at the four literal corners of a flat earth. I do not believe that, and neither…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1130. Dispensational hermeneutics gets accused, fairly often and rather confidently, of playing a shell game with the biblical text: reading the Old Testament literally when it suits the argument and switching to symbol whenever a plain reading becomes awkward. I have heard the charge from the pulpit of churches that hold to a very…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 1129. Biblical literalism gets blamed for a great deal it never actually claimed, and nowhere is the confusion thicker than in the running argument between Scripture and science. People assume that if I hold to biblical literalism I must also believe the sun is a lamp fixed to a solid dome, because that is…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1128. Helping children love Scripture is, I think, one of the most important tasks any Christian parent takes on, and also one of the most quietly daunting. We want our children not simply to know facts about the Bible but to treasure it, to reach for it naturally, and to find in it the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1127. A Bible reading plan started with such good intentions back in January. This would finally be the year you read through the whole thing. February arrived and you missed a few days. March, you tried to catch up and fell further behind. By April you had quietly given up. Sound familiar? You are…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1126. A Bible reading approach is one of those decisions that sounds small until you actually sit down with your Bible and wonder where to begin. Should you start at Genesis and read straight through to Revelation? Should you jump around to different books as a need or interest arises? Should you follow a…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1125. Biblical genealogies have glazed over more eyes than almost any other section of Scripture. “And so-and-so fathered so-and-so, who fathered so-and-so,” page after page, and it is entirely fair to ask whether God will be disappointed if you skip past them on your way to the story. Let me put your mind at…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1124. Understanding Scripture is not always straightforward, and if you have ever hit a passage that made no sense at all, read it twice, maybe three times, and remained thoroughly confused, you are in very good company. This is a common experience, and it should not discourage you the way it often does. The…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1123. Bible reading dryness is something every Christian I have ever pastored has experienced at some point, myself very much included. The pages seem flat. The words don’t come alive the way they used to, or the way you keep hearing they should. You know you are meant to want this, and yet most…