The Danger of an Open Bible

Jared Olivetti has an intriguing piece at Gentle Reformation, where he reflects on how dangerous it can be for people to read their Bibles the wrong way.

When Jesus and Satan had their showdown in the wilderness, what was the Enemy’s great tactic? To quote, misquote, and under-quote God’s Word, giving his lies the appearance of evil (don’t all the best lies do that?). Every great heretic in the history of the church has been an expert in the Bible and has used the Bible to do terrible things. An open Bible is a dangerous thing. More specifically, poor Bible reading is dangerous Bible reading. In all seriousness, consider how many people have been horribly abused with the Bible.

We certainly don’t have the option of not reading or preaching the Bible! But this is a double-edged sword…and just as I wouldn’t want you swinging a sword around without learning how to use it first, Jesus wants you to read and to read well.

I particularly appreciate his concern with the danger of Bible dissection:

…to read with dissection is to read the Bible with a microscope, to read atomistically, on the most minute level possible. This happens when we read without any sense of the context, just waiting for a verse to jump out at us. And when said verse does jump, we make it our verse for the day (or, worse, our “life-verse”), never bothering to wonder what the author intended to say, what the first audience thought, or how it fits into the whole scope of the Bible. This is the instagram way of reading the Bible.

Check it out!