Is it Biblical to Read Your Bible?

Probably the worst thing you can do as a believer is to blindly accept what someone tells you. Trust me. This is why Paul was always telling people to be more like that one church in that one place, because of the various reasons he listed. Anyway, whenever another Christian voices an opinion I don’t like, I get real serious and say something like “is that biblical?” and if they list a bunch of verses, I just squint my eyes and mutter a phrase that has the word “contextualization” in it. As an evangelical thought leader, it doesn’t really matter what I believe, what matters is that I am always disagreeing, because if you never state opinions of your own, you will never be wrong.

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One thing you will always hear pastors say is “read your Bible.” Another thing you will hear pastors say is “Matthew, we need to talk about your online presence.” But back to the first thing. People are always telling you to read Scripture, but no one ever seems to ask: is this biblical? For the entire history of the church, going back all 200 years, Christians have assumed that it is. Folks, let’s play devil’s adjective: what if it’s NOT biblical to read your Bible? You could be sinning every time you look at Scripture! But let’s not get head for ourselves; let’s go to the Greek.

When it comes to biblical verses about the Bible, you have to look at the text. Let’s start with the story of Peter and the Ethiopian Unit. This is when the Ethiopian guy was riding to Damascus in his chariot and he got blinded by that bright light, so obviously he couldn’t read his Bible anymore. So God told Peter to go explain the Bible to the Ethiopian, but Peter didn’t want to go, and this was CRT, so God tried to bribe Peter by lowering a sheet of delicious animals for him to eat. It was the first potluck. But then Peter didn’t eat them, probably because he thought it was a trick, or maybe he panicked and asked God if he could build a shelter for each of the animals, which is what Peter did when he got nervous: he built things. This is why God used him to build the church, also because he was good at cutting off people’s ears. Anyway, the point is this: reading the Bible is definitely in the Bible.

But now, much like a homeschooler on the wedding night, we have to ask: wait, which parts? A lot of theology nerds will tell you that the important verses are in the New Testament. Theology nerds love the New Testament, I guess because there are more Americans in it, like John and Mark, as opposed to all the foreign people in the Old Testament.

However, let’s look at one of the most famous Christians of the Bible: Jesus. He was always quoting verses to silence his haters, which is what we in the business call brand management. And here’s where things get wild: did you know that out of all the verses Jesus quoted, almost all of them were from the Old Testament? There’s our smoking gum, guys. Why would Jesus quote the prophets and not, say, Revelation? Well, for starters, he’s in the Trinity, and the Greek word for Trinity is another word that means something similar to that, except in Greek.

This is why, whenever I read the Bible, I only read Song of Solomon, because I am more Christlike than any of you. And if you disagree with me, I would say this: your real problem here is with contextualization, isn’t it?