Why It Is So Hard to Read The Bible

I have been reading a book by Barbara Herrnstein Smith entitled “Natural Reflections: Human Cognition at the Nexus of Science and Religion”. This book has helped me answer one of the great riddles of ministry—why is it so hard for church people to read the Bible?

I am not talking about folks who won’t read the Bible. I am talking about folks that truly want to read the Bible but read right over or through what is there. For example. I held a study once where the goal was to read the Gospel of Mark straight through as a singular work. In other words, rather than drawing out verses from here or there or skipping across the Bible looking for themes and topics, the people would read Mark like they would read John Grisham or John Updike. Because the gospel is a literary work—a narrative with its own internal logic, plot, and characters, it should be easy to do so, even if the narrative world of the gospel is anchored in a time and place separated from us by two millennia.

The experiment yielded an interesting result. They all struggled through it. Oh, they could read the words. They were all literate. But they could not piece together the story Mark was telling because the readers—all of whom had a background in a church—could not stop inserting details that were not there.

Angels kept appearing where there are no angels. Wise Men tried to crash the party. The prodigal son made a cameo. The Trinity must have been the reason for one thing or another. Don’t misunderstand. My readers did not actually read about these people in Mark. But they tried to understand Mark’s story by bringing them into their interpretation. So although their understandings could be classified surely as “Christian”, even interesting, their understandings were not what Mark himself was trying to convey in his own, unique story.

So back to my question—why is it so hard for church people to read the Bible? Smith argues that it is a basic trait of human nature to practice what she terms “cognitive conservatism”. Smith argues that the “tendency to retain one’s beliefs in the face of what strikes other people as clear disconfirmation appears to be a very general phenomenon.” Once we form an explanation of some aspect of reality, we all tend to be most alert to what confirms it and quite resistant to evidence to the contrary which we will treat as “irritants”.

A great many adults in the church were also children in the church. And the churches within which they were children vary widely. In many church traditions children are taught doctrinal truth or made to memorize bible verses. Perhaps they memorize a catechism which provides a summary of Christian doctrine. Quite a few traditions discourage independent thinking, believing that the trained clergy are uniquely suited to inform the faithful what the scriptures say.

And because this instruction happens to the young, who are not yet capable of reading and understanding the Bible on its own terms, they grow into their “cognitive conservatism” around Christian faith. But this belief system is built upon dogmatic truth propositions and not the richly multifarious nature of the Biblical literature, particularly the Gospels. And since children are dressed as wise men and shepherds for the church Christmas special and told to gather around the manger, is it any wonder as adults they cannot see that it might be important to understanding Mark’s purpose that he doesn’t have an infancy narrative.

I don’t have an immediate solution to this problem, although continued practice and encouragement helps. Perhaps we need to think about the nature of Christian Education for children. We should never teach children things that one day will need to be untaught. We need to prepare them, not indoctrinate them, to grow into curious, responsible people of faith. We need to help all people broaden their realities so as to see people of different faiths and orientations less as “irritants” and more as opportunities to expand awareness. This is how Barbara Smith concludes her essay:

Scientists share cognitive tendencies, achievements, and limits with nonscientists; religious believers share them with nonbelievers. Although each may put the world together and conduct his or her life in ways that are at odds with or opaque to the other, the cosmology and way of life of each deserves minimally respectful acknowledgement from the other. Such acknowledgement would not mean accepting ideas one finds fantastic or claims one knows are false. And of course it would not mean approving practices that one knows are confining, maiming, or murderous to oneself or to others. What it would mean is recognizing, as parallel to one’s own, the processes by which those cosmologies and ways of life come to be formed.

Not me, says the self-vaunting evangelical atheist. Tu quo que—you too says the defensive, resentful theist. Et ego—I, too, says the reflexive, reflective naturalist.

And Et ego says the blogger. What do you say?

Reference: “Natural Reflections: Human Cognition at the Nexus of Science and Religion”, Barbara Herrnstein Smith. Yale University Press. 2009