I often read in the evening while my husband sits and listens to music. I will laugh out loud at something, usually subtle humor like the wry word play in a bit of description, and my husband will ask why I laughed. I can usually tell him the brief funny bit, but sometimes I have to explain why Hawk was in Susan's apartment when Spenser was in California, and who this other gunman from Arizona is, and in all the backstory, it just becomes less funny. You either just laugh at the tiny highlights, or commit to know what's going on. If I keep him informed on the story as we go along, he surrepticiously reads with me. In those cases, sharing the funny highlights with him is easier, but there's I'm also obliged to keep him up with the story: "Oh, Hawk just got shot! I wonder if Spenser will come back now?"
I am teaching a survey of American Literature to my oldest two daughters, and I was reading excerpts from Emerson and Thoreau to them this week. Liz pointed out that people quote these authors all the time, so I occasionally read a sentence that was often quoted, but in context. Oftentimes, we found that they sounded pretty good when quoted in one isolated sentence, but if you read their whole story (especially Emerson), it wasn't something we agree with.
Reading the Bible can be like Johnny's experience with my books. Either he gets in on the story, and understands what's happening, or he just laughs and doesn't think too much about it. You can read the quotable parts of an author and think, "Ah, that relates to me," but you're seeking your own meaning in the quote, and not really endeavoring to learn Thoreau's message to his American audience. Sometimes, there is that awkward middle stage, where you read it and think, "I just don't get this." You can choose to get help, go deeper, puzzle it out, or you can give up and remain a surface reader.
In teaching my kids, we've been talking about deconstruction, a method of criticism which assumes you can never understand what the author is trying to communicate. The only way you can learn from a text is to bring your own meaning to it, understand it in relation to your own story. There's a certain despair inherent in this thinking, because it implies that we only communicate with ourselves--understanding someone else is impossible.
When I read the Bible, I assume that the God of the universe has something to communicate to me. That alone is an amazing fact. If I rightly understand that He is holy and incredible, and I'm just one of millions of His creations, and yet He knows me and cares about me and wants to communicate with me...okay, that's a good way to start reading the book.
But I also have to commit to hearing His story. Sometimes Johnny will ask me a question when I'm reading, and my response is, "I would have to explain too much. Just laugh. You don't want to know the rest." But if I do answer his questions, sometimes it's tedious to him, five minutes of his life that he would rather have spent with his music. Sometimes he thinks what I'm reading is stupid, but if he asks and listens, he discovers why I like it, and it deepens our understanding of each other. He invests in our relationship.
When you read something in the Bible beyond the familiar quote, does it sometimes offend you or seem puzzling? Why would God tell them to kill all those people? And at this point, do you really want to understand God or do you not want to invest the time? The story is a big one, and you have to commit some time and energy to grasping it. You have to lay aside your own perspective and seek to understand what is happening, maybe ask for help.
If you commit, you will deepen your relationship with the God who wrote the Book, the one who wants to communicate with you. But this is God's story, and you have to set aside your own.
No comments:
Post a Comment