I believe the church must be about teaching people to how to read. Would those who struggled to get the Scriptures into the hands of the lay people so that they might read for themselves the Word of God be disappointed with the way we have allowed the Bible to be read?
Creating new reading habits involves releasing the know-it-all attitude that comes with familiarity. Ellen Davis captures this idea when she warns of the danger of the “That’s just what I thought” mentality (16).
Creating new reading habits also involves embracing ambiguities. We could learn a lot in this regard from our Jewish siblings who routinely entertain possibilities of multiple meanings (24).
Creating new reading habits involves enabling “wise wonder”. It seems that the more we study Scripture, the more we uncover new and unexplored layers within the text. Our wise wonder must allow freedom for critical traditioning, or rethinking our formerly accepted theological positions (xix).
The primary obstacle we face in accomplishing this is the expectation of certainty. Do our jobs depend upon our sounding more certain than we are about what is true? (15)
The church must also be about the improvisation of the third act. In the canonization process the church graciously forwarded us the manuscripts of the first and second act. Many have gone to great lengths to place those scripts in our hands and they must be read (and read correctly) in order for us to faithfully improvise the third act. In our reading we gain intimate understanding of the Author of this divine drama. We also see tensions, ambiguities, and mystery, and therefore must anticipate those elements within our own portion of the story. As we realize that the story of the bible is about us we gain clarity (not certainty) we need for our improvisation.
Davis, Ellen F., and Richard B. Hays. The Art of Reading Scripture. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003.
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