The modern way to read the Bible today is to think how the scriptural texts you are reading may apply to your life or circumstances. We could call this the life application reading way of the Bible. Then there is the cafeteria style approach that picks and chooses the parts of the Scriptures they like and ignore the rest. If one goes off to Bible college, it is not to simply read the Bible for all its worth but to read it according to a certain theological tradition. Modern philosophical systems and science are the academic ways to read the Bible now. For those who know Hebrew and Greek, parse the words, study the grammar, and look at the sentence structure. Dig deeper into the near eastern history behind the text. But does this really lead us closer to God or make us more Christ-like?
Reading the Bible with a Christ centered focus is what many early Christians did but what about the virtues of Christ and how He actually read the scriptures? We no longer read the Bible with Jewish eyes or with spiritual eyes. We see things from our own historical location through our American western eyes of economic prosperity. Do we see that all of Scripture is about Christ (John 5:39-40) and he is the perfect revelation from God (Hebrews 1:1-3)?
Sadly, I don't see much difference in how atheists read the Bible today and how modern Christians read it. They both have a strong tendency to read it in a very flat-one-dimensional way. Can't people see how God accommodated Himself to where people were at the time? It looks like God commands divorce on demand in the mosaic law and yet here is Jesus saying, that is not God's heart at all. God hates divorce just like the prophetic tradition says, it's because of our hardness of heart is why God said what He did (see Matthew 19:7-8).
Can we not see progressive revelation within the scriptures that lead to the perfect revelation in Christ? God requires animal sacrifices early on and then says later in the prophetic tradition that these are not what God desires at all. It looks early on in the Bible that God is about vengeance and holy violence but then we see later, He's really about mercy and forgiveness. If we really read the scriptures as Jesus did, we would see that violence of any kind is out while enemy love and sacrificial grace and mercy is what God is really about. Maybe it's time for Christians to move away from a crude Biblicism towards a cruciform community of following Christ. When we read the Bible like Jesus, it's not the literal letter of the law we follow but the heart of God seen in the face of Christ revealed through His Spirit that matters.
So how do we read the Bible like Jesus did? I would make these three suggestions for starters:
1. Read every place where Jesus uses the older testament and see how he reads it differently than its original hearers did? See what Jesus focuses on and what he leaves out? What scriptures did Jesus read the most and which ones did he read the least or not focus on at all?
2. Read the early church fathers Christological interpretations of scripture. See how they read the Bible differently than moderns today? How do their epiphanies, stories, biographies shape who they were in their context? Develop a mind of the early Christian fathers and mothers.
3. Read several books by the saints of the church. Spiritual fathers and mothers who lived holy and devout lives for God. What guidance or revelation did God give these medieval Christians? What can be learned from them about discipleship, following Jesus in community, learning the art of contemplative prayer and reading scripture through 'lectio divina.'
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