Rhythm of meditation of scripture: Lectio Divina (Part 1)
The pattern for reading the Bible
As followers of Jesus, there is a well worn path that we often take when it comes to reading the Bible. We are introduced to it by parents or in Sunday school when we are children. Or if you came to faith as a teenager or adult, then you probably heard the Bible taught in services or at a Bible study. The Bible is read and taught to us by others.
Then as we grow in spiritual maturity, we are told that we should begin reading the Bible for ourselves. Sometimes we're given guidance on what that should look like and sometimes we fumble our own way through. Over time, we come to a place where we are more comfortable with the Bible. We have read many of the major sections of the Bible like the first 5 books of the bible (Pentatuch: five books) minus Leviticus, because most skip this book. We've read the books of Psalms and Proverbs and have heard major stories from the other books, except the minor prophets. Almost no one preaches or reads those regularly. We've also read the gospels and most of the letters, except Revelation, because it's hard to understand. As we've read the Bible this way, we are often looking for how to apply it to our lives.
Often, the next step is learning to study the Bible. Some people go to bible college and learn the scholarly approach to reading and understanding the Bible. Others do it informally by digging into commentaries. This step in the process of learning to read and understand the Bible is extremely helpful, especially as leaders. We want to make sure that we're teaching people what God actually wanted taught, and not simply what we think the Bible says. This includes learning what kind of literature it is (whether poetry, narrative, letter, or apocalyptic). Then you dig into how it would have been understood in the original culture that read it first. Then you figure out how to bridge contexts to apply it to our own day and age.
The danger of solely reading for information and application
From the time we are kids, we are taught to read for information so that we can gain knowledge. Then we are asked to pass tests proving that we can apply what we learn. Robert Mulholland in his book Shaped by the Word says that there are 6 dangerous pitfalls to reading the Bible only this way. He says,
"Informational reading seeks to cover as much as possible as quickly as possible so as to quickly separate wheat from the chaff and get the data needed to do what must be done." It's mostly about quantity and not quality. It's about scanning instead of savoring.
"Informational reading is linear. We move from the first element to the second to the third and on to the end, thinking that reading is little more than the process of movement through the parts." However, not all of the Bible is written in a linear fashion. Books like Revelation or Genesis 1 and 2 are telling the same events in multiple different ways. There are not two times that humans are created in Genesis. Genesis 1 places humanity in the context of creation. Genesis 2 talks about humanity’s role in creation.
"Informational reading seeks to master the text. We seek to grasp it, to get our minds around it. We bring it under our control. Having done this, we then seek to justify our control (interpretation) and defend it against any other controls (other people’s interpretations) and we can use the information to impose our agenda on the world." Notice the words control and grasp. This way of reading makes us the master of the text instead of text mastering us!
"Informational reading turns the text into something ‘out there’ for us to control and/or manipulate according to our purposes." Again, this is about control. I can be over or beside the text instead of the text being something that is over me. It is something that should get inside us and we should get inside it!
"Informational reading is analytical, critical, and judgmental. This is the outgrowth of standing back and running what we read through the filters of our own perceptions, our own desires, our own wants, and our own needs. All we read is evaluated for its enhancement of our false-self-that self-referenced structure of life that seeks to mold the world in its own image." Mulholland is telling us that reading primarily for information can easily turn into using scripture to reinforce what we want to believe and not necessarily to transform us. We have a tendency to try to transform scripture instead of scripture transforming us!
"Informational reading is characterized by a problem-solving mentality, which feeds back to the functional mode of existence." Does this work for me? When I do what it says, does it get my desired result? This is reading the Bible like an instructional manual.
Reading for relationship and communication
I'm not saying that reading for information and application is bad or wrong. Truthfully, informational reading is necessary if we want to be well-rounded in our understanding and approach to the Bible. However, we must recognize the dangers of primarily reading the Bible this way. If we stop at studying the Bible in order to understand it, teach it, or even how to apply it, we are stopping short of one of the intended purposes of the Bible. The purpose of the Bible is to be able to make it possible to hear from the living God of the universe. He wants to reveal himself to us and he wants to speak directly to us. We read the Bible so we can come into God’s presence and know him.
We need to add another way of reading the Bible to our rhythms if we are to truly encounter God through it. I like the way Ruth Haley Barton puts it in her book Sacred Rhythms. She says there is a difference in the way we read "a newspaper or textbook and reading a love letter." When you read a love letter, you read it slowly and savor the words that are chosen. You reread it so that you can catch the subtlety of the deeper meanings and emotions behind the words because they convey the heart of the person toward you. We have 66 love letters written to us by the God of the universe. It's important for us to have a deep relationship with the God of the Bible and not just with the Bible itself!
Probably the most important question we can ask before we sit down to read the Bible is our motive for reading. Our motive for reading will shape our method of reading. Am I sitting down to read because I long to hear from God and be close to him? Our motive and agenda should be to cultivate a deep intimacy and friendship with God. So how do we begin to read the Bible like it's a love letter? How do we quit trying to master it and let it master us? This is where the discipline called Lectio Divina comes in.
Ruth Haley Barton tells us that, "Lectio Divina (translated ‘divine [or sacred] read’) is an approach to the scriptures that sets us up to listen for the word of God spoken to us in the present moment...Lectio Divina is rooted in the belief that through the presence of the Holy Spirit, the scriptures are indeed alive and active as we engage them for spiritual transformation. Hebrews 4:12
In our next post we are going to address some of the questions people might have about meditation and then in the last post we will go over two practical ways to practice it.