To read the Bible, it can feel overwhelming. What do I do? I want to read the Bible and grow, but where do I start?
I was raised in a church tradition that highly valued reading the Bible. People were encouraged to read their Bible every day, go to Bible study classes during the week, memorise verses, and hang verses made into pieces of art on the wall. I remember one of these hanging on the wall of our living room:
Our minister had a passion for New Testament Greek. On Sundays, as part of his long sermon, he would share his latest discoveries on a particular New Testament Greek word. It was interesting, but not well connected to the daily needs of our farming community.
The pressure was on, or at least it felt that way. There was pressure to:
1. Read your Bible more
2. Memorise scriptures
3. Understand New Testament Greek
4. Tell others about Jesus
5. Study, learn, and gain more knowledge
It always felt like there was more to do. I emphasize the word ‘do’ because it felt like you were being judged by how much you did. God judged you, your faith community judged you, and of course, you judged yourself. It was a performance-based faith.
Have you ever experienced this type of culture? It is really easy to create. You just put out an expectation of performance, promote it as the optimal performance level, and then let comparisonitis sneak in to create the pressure.
Here is an example of how this plays out:
• Expectation of performance: Read the whole Bible in a year.
• Promotion of the optimal level: People are encouraged to do it, classes are created, books are written on how to do it, and people tell others how reading the Bible every day is making a huge difference.
• Comparisonitis kicks in: You compare what you are doing with what others are doing. You either feel smug and proud of your superior performance, or you feel less than and not good enough.
What about those who find reading difficult due to sight difficulties or dyslexia? What about those who are just too busy to spend hours reading because small children run around their feet, work consumes much of their day, or sick relatives need help?
We beat ourselves up, and others do too. We conclude God judges us poorly because we are just not good enough and not meeting the standard.
To Read the Bible Feels Overwhelming
Someone emailed me this comment:
I know that feeling:
• A “should” attached to reading the Bible.
• A “should” attached to having a personal devotional life.
• The feeling of overwhelm about not knowing where to start.
• A comparison to others and what they are doing, which lets the guilt and shame ghosts whisper in.
It all feels too much, and so you don’t do a thing.
Henri Nouwen
I found relief from this performance pressure when I read the words of someone else who struggled with it. Henri Nouwen was one of the greatest writers of Christian spirituality in the 20th century. He talks about a conversation he had with Mother Teresa:
Permission to Do What You Can
What I hear from this reading is this:
• Make personal time with God a priority.
• Do what you can within the context of your daily life.
• Make it concrete and specific.
• Don’t play the comparisonitis game.
For me, at this stage in life and in this context, I do things that I will not share—because then you might compare! At other times in my life, I did other things.
I will do what I can, with what I have, in the context of my life as it is now. Because, as Mother Teresa would say:
Quotes to Consider
- “People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies. Succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you. Be honest and frank anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight. Build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God. It was never between you and them anyway.” — Mother Teresa
- “Christians don’t simply learn or study or use Scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water …” — Eugene H. Peterson
- “The question is: Why have these poems and prayers endured? Why, thousands of years later, do we still have them? And the answer you’ll return to again and again is: They speak to our human experience.” — Rob Bell
- “But he answered, ‘It is written, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”’” — Matthew 4:4
Questions to Answer
1. How has comparisonitis influenced your life?
2. What did you hear in that excerpt from Henri Nouwen?
3. In the context of your life at the moment, what is highly achievable in regards to reading the Bible?
Formation Exercise
Get a small card, the size of a business card. Write this verse on the back of it:
Read this psalm three times a day for the next week: when you wake, when you have lunch, and before you go to bed. At the end of the week, consider what you have learned from these verses.
Further Reading
- Overcoming Comparisonitis: The Compulsion to Compare Yourself to Others
- How to Chew on the Bible with Mindfulness
- How Does Reading the Bible Impact Mental Health?
Barry Pearman
Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash
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