Why don’t you read the Bible more than you do?
Our minds might rush to all kinds of reasonable excuses. “My job has been really demanding this season.” “My child won’t sleep through the night.” “The mornings are my only chance to exercise.” “I’ll start again when life slows down a bit.” Oh, how Satan loves the pitifully tiny hurdles we allow to keep us from the Bible. And believe me, I’ve spent time stuck behind each of those hurdles.
If we’re honest with ourselves, a lot of modern American excuses boil down to one: I’m just too busy right now.
Really?
Am I really too busy to hear from God? Am I too busy to have my soul revived by his living and active word? Am I too busy to receive the wisdom I desperately need in all of my busyness? Am I too busy to have my dim eyes awakened again to ultimate, spiritual reality? Am I too busy to have my easily distracted mind focused on the most important things? Am I too busy to taste the sweetest honey and receive the finest gold? Are we really too busy?
We’re not — and we know it. So, why don’t we read God’s word more than we do? In part, because we haven’t admitted the real reasons we don’t read the Bible.
Battling Spiritual Illiteracy
At Desiring God, our team of teachers wants to bring Bible-saturated, Christ-treasuring theology to bear on the greatest needs of our day. We’re first and foremost committed to the enduring needs in every generation: Christ and the gospel, sin and holiness, the church and prayer, heaven and hell. We’re also aware, though, that some needs are particularly acute in each generation, and so we’re studying the needs of our day and asking God how we might help.
This series is an attempt to address the disturbing decline in reading, especially the reading of the Bible. According to one study, 84 percent of American adults read for five minutes or less per day. According to Lifeway, only 31 percent of churchgoers read the Bible daily. That means less than 10 percent of all American adults read the Bible daily. That’s a crisis if you believe Romans 10:14–17:
How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? . . . So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
Life and death hang on our ability to hear God — and to hear God, we have to read (or at least listen while someone else reads). He reveals himself, his will, and his gospel through words. Therefore, you can argue that reading is the most important thing we’ll ever do — and fewer people today are reading anything, much less reading the Bible. In a day when people are reading less and less, we need to teach people the vital, happy habit of meeting God in his word.
Why You Don’t Read the Bible
So, why don’t we read the Bible? When we look below our busyness and read what God tells us in his word, we see several deeper causes. The series will address a number of the biggest barriers to faithful, life-giving Bible reading, but I’ll mention a few here. I wonder which most accurately diagnoses your Bible neglect.
First, we’re witnessing a general apathy toward divine revelation. We’re living in an increasingly illiterate culture, and in that decline, we’re witnessing a pandemic of apathy toward the self-revelation of God. In other words, many (even self-professing Christians) couldn’t effectively read the Bible if they wanted to (illiteracy), but they don’t even want to (apathy). Jesus warns that some people “hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful” (Mark 4:18–19). We want you to want to read the Bible.
Second, many fail to read, understand, and live the Bible because of stubborn pride and spiritual immaturity. These readers fail to persist and grow because they’re content to circle the Bible from high above, in a comfortable holding pattern. They refuse to mature because maturing requires submission and risk. God warns the immature, “Though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food” (Hebrews 5:12). Being too proud to submit to anyone or anything besides themselves, they do not receive the word with meekness (James 1:21), and so they forfeit Scripture’s life and power.
Third, again, we’re seeing a widespread functional illiteracy that leads to an unsettling insecurity in interpretation. For people to meaningfully commune with God in his word, they have to know some basic tools for reading well. Proverbs 2 exhorts us,
My son, if you receive my words
and treasure up my commandments with you,
making your ear attentive to wisdom
and inclining your heart to understanding;
yes, if you call out for insight
and raise your voice for understanding,
if you seek it like silver
and search for it as for hidden treasures,
then you will understand the fear of the Lord
and find the knowledge of God. (Proverbs 2:1–5)
God promises to give understanding, but only to those who listen carefully, pray for help, and persistently seek insight like someone searching for treasure. How many have no idea where and how to search? Some who seem to lack the hunger for Scripture just lack the ability and confidence to read it for themselves.
Fourth, attention spans have dwindled to anemic levels, especially as our pace of life has accelerated. The author of Psalm 119 prays,
Lead me in the path of your commandments,
for I delight in it.
Incline my heart to your testimonies,
and not to selfish gain!
Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things;
and give me life in your ways. (Psalm 119:35–37)
Even with basic reading comprehension tools, we need the ability to sit and focus for more than sixty or ninety seconds. We need to do what Martha failed to do when she was scrambling to serve Jesus while Mary sat listening at his feet. “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:41–42). Reading the Bible well takes time and focus, and many modern people are woefully short on both.
These are just a handful of the deeper hurdles to consistent and vibrant communion with God in his word. If you’re willing to look a layer deeper, you may see deeper reasons for your own Bible-reading struggles. And you may find a deeper, more compelling invitation to come and feast.
‘I Have Found the Book’
In 2 Kings 22, the good King Josiah ascended the throne in Israel and decided to use the national treasury to repair the temple. As the carpenters, builders, and masons went to work, the high priest stumbled onto a book. Hilkiah told the secretary, “I have found the Book of the Law in the house of the Lord” (2 Kings 22:8). The secretary took the book to Josiah and read it before the king. And “when the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his clothes” (2 Kings 22:11).
We don’t know how long the book had been lost, but it seems like at least a couple of generations, going back to Josiah’s wicked grandfather Manasseh. As Josiah realized what he was hearing, his heart broke and leapt all at once. He was devastated by how badly the book had been neglected (2 Kings 22:13). And he freshly resolved to recover and obey all that God had commanded (2 Kings 23:3).
We hope this series might be a 2 Kings 22 moment for you. As you pick through the broken-down temple of your daily devotions, trying to discern why you haven’t been more consistent and as engaged as you’d like to be, we hope you might rediscover the power and wonder of the book. If God is merciful, you may find yourself wanting to tear your clothes in repentance. Along the way, we hold out a grace-filled, no-cost invitation to come back and feast:
Come, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and he who has no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
hear, that your soul may live. (Isaiah 55:1–3)
What stability might more regular Bible reading bring to your troubled soul? What peace to your distress, what counsel for your confusion, what perspective to your disorientation, what hope for your future? Why don’t you come and read the Bible with us?
Desiring God