According to legend, an aging Karl Barth, who was one of the greatest theologians of the 20th Century, was asked if he could sum up all of his learning in one sentence. He closed his eyes and thought for a moment and then responded, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
Americans and the Bible
If Barth is right and the Bible is the key to everything we know about God, then we may be in big trouble.
According to a recent Christianity Today article, 26 million Americans stopped reading the Bible regularly. Apparently, yet another impact of COVID-19 is that the Bible plays a smaller role in the lives of many Christians.
According to the 12 Annual State of the Bible report published by The American Bible Society, it wasn’t just the occasional Scripture readers who didn’t pick up their Bibles as often in 2022. “More than 13 million of the most engaged Bible readers—measured by frequency, feelings of connection to God, and impact on day-to-day decisions—said they read less of God’s Word than in previous years.”
The pandemic certainly took a visible toll on church attendance. The Pew Research Center found that nearly a third of regular churchgoers have not returned to church buildings. Some choose to participate online, but others have dropped out completely.
Couple that phenomenon with the research findings that before the pandemic 14 percent of Christians reported daily Bible reading, while only 10 percent of Americans report daily Bible reading after the pandemic, and we have a recipe for disaster.
John Plake, the lead researcher for The American Bible Society, concludes that the dramatic change shows how closely Bible reading is connected to church attendance.
What’s the problem?
There are three things the pandemic did to take a bite out of our relationship with the Bible.
1. It undermined our rituals.
The spiritual life is a series of disciplines. Rituals provide the stability and discipline that produces growth.
Separated from our rituals, we lost the discipline of church attendance and Bible reading.
2. It led many to reevaluate their beliefs and basic assumptions.
Months away from the spiritual community left a vacuum — an empty space for reevaluating life. Some are still living in this foggy uncertain space.
3. It separated us from those who normally help us to understand what we are reading.
While reading and understanding the Bible is achievable for anyone, it does require a few particular skills. Sometimes people are left scratching their heads after reading the Bible. This doesn’t exactly motivate more reading.
Understanding God’s Word is an ancient problem. Even in the days of Nehemiah, as people were rediscovering the Bible, it’s clear that most needed help to understand what was being read.
“The Levites—Jeshua, Bani, Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan and Pelaiah—instructed the people in the Law while the people were standing there. They read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people understood what was being read” (Nehemiah 8:7-8).
The Levites (who were the priestly tribe) had to read the Word of God and then explain it to the people. Why did they have to explain it?
The Bible can be difficult to understand. It was written over a period of 1000 years, between two and three thousand years ago, by numerous authors, in a foreign land, culture, and language. Understandably, there are parts of it that are perplexing to us.
Yet, Jesus promised that if we made the effort, He would send the Holy Spirit who would guide us as we read. Jesus said to his disciples —
“But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you” (John 14:26).
The most important thing you can do is to get back into the discipline of reading God’s Word.
I have created a FREE course that will teach you the basic skills you need in order to read the Bible for understanding. It’s only six lessons and each lesson is about 15 minutes long.
If you’re interested, click the image below to register for this FREE course. You will then receive an email video lesson every day for six days.
ENJOY!
