What to read in the Bible when you don't want to read the Bible
You know you should read it, perhaps. But honestly, you don’t want to. That happens sometimes. Maybe in those times you should stick to certain books.
I’ve had times when I wanted to read the Bible but didn’t want to read the Bible. I’ve had times when just opening it would dredge up painful reminders of my own failures and discouragements and dreams that never came to pass.
But then I’d feel guilty.
I should read it. I’d think. I should want to read it. Well, maybe it would help if I just focus on the good parts…the promises, the miracles, and the stories of changed lives. But then those things would only sharpen the ache of hope deferred.
So what parts of the Bible can you read when you’re just not feeling it?
Well, I defaulted to David, Solomon, and Job. These were three guys I could read and not feel judged or looked down on. I could feel to their angst. I could relate to their failures and low moments and fierce wrestling matches with God. These guys were honest and real and moody and edgy and a bit fatalistic at times.
David is so up and down in the psalms that you wonder if he’s bipolar. But his ability to pull it out in the end is nothing short of Houdini-like.
Solomon is so pessimistic and melancholy and disillusioned and philosophical that you wonder how he made the cut to get in the Bible. He sticks out like a moody sore thumb.
And Job, he’s just raw and honest. He keeps it real until keeping it real almost goes wrong.
But all three of these guys pull it through in the end. They stand out as three flawed saints with dirt under their nails, spittle all over their beards, and hair a little more frizzed than it should be. They remind me of George McFly. But I love these guys. I need these guys. They saved me.
The way I connected with them so intimately was that I wrote stories about them to my son who was in prison at the time. I picked a scene in their life and wrote an accurate but fictionalized version of the scene. I immersed myself into their skin, inhabited their brain, and felt their feelings.
With David it was his incident with Bathsheba. I viscerally experienced and narrated his lust, his panic, his scheming, his rationalizations, his blindness, and his horror at Nathan’s rebuke. But then I went on and channeled his humility and surrender and elegant penning of the greatest poem on brokenness in the history of literature, Psalm 51.
This channeling of David was life changing. All of the sudden life with God seemed more accessible, more real, more tangible, more realistic, more human. Even if my life didn’t match up to my perception of David, when I did this exercise it didn’t seem to matter. First of all, that perception changed. And secondly, if David could recover, so could I.
I did the same with Solomon and Job, experiencing the same connection.
You don’t need to channel Bible characters in a first-person narrative to fully feel them, but it is one way to do it. Give it a shot.
Here are three classic examples from our Three Musketeers.
Job: “Have I not wept for those in trouble? Has not my soul grieved for the poor? Yet when I hoped for good, evil came; when I looked for light, then came darkness. The churning inside me never stops;” 30:25.
David: “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? … How long must I wrestle with my thoughts…” Then at the end, “But I trust in your unfailing love;” Psalm 13.
Solomon: “The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.” Eccl. 9:11.
But I’ve got to say this…of all three, my favorite Bible character to read when I don’t want to read the Bible is…drum roll please…Solomon in Ecclesiastes. He’s just incomparable. He’s delightful and morose and moody and charmingly real. Every chapter delivers. Wisdom seeps through the pages. Turns of phrase delight me. The Bible feels more real after hanging out with Solomon.
I hope you don’t not want to read the Bible (I know, awkward). But if you have that feeling, now you know where one man went to survive and recover and find delight.