Don't just read the Bible. Learn to live inside its story

Have you ever watched a film with someone who repeatedly interrupts to ask the point of a certain scene? They want to understand its message but, before long, it’s clear that their search for meaning is preventing them from entering the world of the story. Instead of experiencing the reality that the film is inviting them into and allowing it to shape them, they are too busy trying to extract meaning from it.

Sometimes we can do the same thing with the Bible. We construct many of our sermons as if scripture were a guidebook for living, looking always in the text for where the challenge or encouragement can be derived and then walked out in our lives in the coming weeks. Or perhaps, in our Bible studies, we focus our discussion first on the principles we distil from the text and then on the resulting actions we can commit to. 

This is not necessarily bad. We search scripture for life lessons because we love the Lord and want to obey Him. But the Bible is more than this. It invites us into a reality, portraying the story of God with His people. And God doesn’t invite us to stand over scripture, only extracting principles for faithful living and using the text as a tool that we can apply to our lives. Rather, He calls us to step into the world of the text and walk around in there, letting the story form our imagination. Jesus Himself invites us to abide in His word or, as Eugene Peterson translates it, to “make our home” there (see John 15:7 The Message). 

Learning to look

The prophets understood this. In his book, The Prophetic Imagination (Augsburg Fortress), Walter Brueggemann writes about the Old Testament prophets as keepers and reinterpreters of the memories of God’s presence and activity among His people. In the face of powerful cultural stories about gods who demanded everything and gave nothing, the prophets made themselves at home in the defining memories of God’s faithfulness, whether Exodus and desert wandering or covenant and kingship. They immersed themselves in God’s story, walking around inside these memories and listening to the Spirit there as He reshaped and reinterpreted these memories for a new era. 

I think we’re meant to learn from this. The memories of God in the Torah and other writings formed the prophets’ imaginations – their understanding of who God is and what He calls good – and this, in turn, formed their desires and so, their actions. Like the prophets, the Church also has a repository of memory, found in the Old and New Testaments. It is intended by God to shape our imagination. For He knows that lasting change depends on learning to see differently.

Lasting change depends on learning to see differently

Because of this, our daily reading and weekly preaching of scripture should pursue the development of a biblical imagination in us. Our contemporary cultural stories may be different, but they are still about gods who demand everything and give nothing – and they are still powerful. Only full immersion in a better story, the story of a God who is faithful, present and active, will dislodge such lesser stories. Though of some value, simple application of principles derived from portions of the story will not be enough.

If scripture immersion is essential for renewed imagination and action, what can we do? Assuming we’re already reading the Bible regularly, both individually and corporately, how can we step inside the biblical text more completely when we read or preach it? How might we begin to walk around in it, partnering with the Spirit’s development in us of a biblical imagination?

Immersive imaginings

First, immersion in any story requires reading or listening that is slow, repeated and prayerful. We are not formed by the stories we hear only once. It’s the stories we return to – and even the ones we wrestle with – that begin to shape our perspective on reality and our understanding of what is good. A biblical imagination is formed as we soak in the text repeatedly, reading in conversation with the Spirit who inspired it and noticing whatever He leads us to notice without immediately needing to ‘do something’ with what we find.

Secondly, story and imagination thrive in images and metaphors. Images work differently than concepts. So, the Bible’s pictures of God and humanity work deep below the level of our conscious awareness, slowly reshaping what we notice and desire – and eventually forming our actions in ways consistent with the larger story in which those images are embedded. As a result, one way to walk around inside the text may be to stay longer with its images than we usually might, letting them form our imagination as they will, instead of forcing them to resolve instantly into definable principles and quantifiable actions.

Thirdly, we let the text become a place. So, instead of trying to derive three leadership lessons from Nehemiah, we aim rather to inhabit his world. We see the aftermath of divine judgement and severe loss and how both hope and opposition are tangled together. Perhaps we notice the centrality of God’s covenant promise of restoration and how, in Nehemiah’s world, action and prayer flow seamlessly together. Rather than going straight to identifying leadership principles we can apply, we first inhabit his experience of God and the world around him, starting to see as he sees and letting his desire for God’s glory shape ours.

Then perhaps, like the prophets, we will begin to make our home in scripture such that it will shape not only how we see the world but also what we long for – and then our actions may flow from a truly biblical imagination.