"Reading the Bible, if we do not do it right, can get us into a lot of trouble." Thus begins Eugene Peterson when introducing the how of Bible reading. In one of the four volumes to date in his spirituality series--Eat This Book--Peterson alerts us to one of the woes of poor reading.
Caveat lector, let the reader beware. Peterson explains:
Just having print on the page and knowing how to distinguish nouns from verbs is not enough. I might own a morocco leather Bible, having paid fifty dollars for it, but I don't own the word of God to do with what I want; God is sovereign. The word of God is not my possession. The words printed on the pages of my Bible give witness to the living and active revelation of the God of creation and salvation, the God of love who became the Word made flesh in Jesus, and I had better not forget it. If in my Bible reading I lose touch with this livingness, if I fail to listen to this living Jesus, submit to this sovereignty, and respond to this love, I become arrogant in my knowing and impersonal in my behavior. An enormous amount of damage is done in the name of Christian living by bad Bible reading. Caveat lector, let the reader beware (pp. 82-83).
The question Jesus posed to the religion scholar in Luke 10 was not, "What did you read?" But "How do you read?" It was this very question which led Jesus to define "neighbor" in a way which left the scholar no wiggle room. Further, it led Jesus to reveal the legalist's most devastating flaw, his failure to connect the truth with participation in that truth. It is easy to know what the Bible teaches, quite another to actually live it. Caveat lector, let the reader beware!
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