New Year Hermeneutical Refresh

a framework to help keep God the center of God's own story.

Well friends, 2024 found us and I hope that as the new year begins, you are getting your bearings and steadying your breath. And if you’re new here, hi! I’m Liz, I’m a caregiving mom to four kiddos and a chaplain in training. In this space, we wonder weird things about the bible, ask uncommon questions, and constantly ask ourselves while reading scripture “Who is God here, and what is God like?”

And since it is a new year, I want to do a little hermeneutical refresh for anyone who might be digging into a new bible reading plan, or even just cracking the book open for the first time after a really long time. The reality is that many of us American evangelicals tend to rush through our scripture reading, avoid asking hard questions, and center ourselves in the story. And these habits are hard to break. But our bible reading doesn’t actually benefit us, if it’s all about us, not God. Let’s talk about it.

So, what is scripture? Scripture is God’s story about who God is and what God is like. When we truly affirm that scripture is God–breathed, and still breathing, inspired and still inspiring, we must also affirm that God’s words are not meant to remain solemnly trapped in a dusty old book. The words of scripture are an invitation for the pages to be opened, wrestled with, and explored. But when we treat scripture like a rule book, or a list of ethics and morals, we wind up making ourselves the focal point of a story that we don’t actually enter until long after these pages were all written. Are we believers a part of this magnificent story that spans from creation until now? yes. But we aren’t actually in the book. Too often, we hunt the pages for bite sized nuggets of wisdom to satisfy our snack sized appetite and move along. But when we’re snacking on verses here and there, ripped from their context, not only do we miss the nuance and complexity of the story, but we also actually starve ourselves from because we’re barely tasting the thing that is supposed to feed us.

So what happens when suffering and trauma and grief and heartache hit? We’ll reach for what we know to ground us. We’ll reach for small tangible truths to carry us through. But the nuggets we nibbled on that centered ourselves aren’t going to be able to sustain us long term because they’re not rooted in anything. Instead, reading scripture in a way that we are constantly reminding ourselves of who God is, what God is like, where God has revealed God’s faithfulness thus far, and what his promises for the future actually are, will take us a whole lot farther in the moments that we’re grasping for something true and real and steady and sustaining.

I know because I’ve been there. I know because this is my faith story. This is my why.

So, here’s a loose framework that I’ve found helpful in combatting individualistic and self-focused bible reading and exchanging those for a hermeneutic that is focused on who God is and what God is like.

Through the bible reading framework of observation, inquiry, imagination, and interpretation, we will first seek to slow our pace, resisting the urge to rush in our scriptural application and make it about us. Here we will commit to de–centering ourselves in our scripture reading and recenter God as the focal point of God’s own story.

Now, before we begin, I want to encourage you to do three things:

• First: Remember, the bible is not written to me, myself, and I, it is given for us (plural) to grow as the people of God. Much of the instruction isn’t for individuals, but groups of people who are practicing their faith in community. Bible reading is no different. The steps I’m suggesting are best practiced together in community. So, read scripture out loud together, make observations together. Ask questions together. Imagine together. And interpret together.

• Next, read the bible like you’re reading a story. Read it like a script. A novel being transformed into a play. Pay attention to who’s coming and going, look for patterns, themes, and repetitions. Treat the bible like literature.

• And this may go without saying but, read more than one verse or a chapter at a time. So much of what’s happening in the story is built on what’s occurred in the pages before. If you want to be a understand what’s happening in and through these pages, read whole books in one sitting, or read the larger books in big chunks, you know, like you would read any other magnificent story.

So, here’s the breakdown:

• Observation: This step in our bible reading invites us to pause and notice what’s there. What’s missing? This is a good time to remember that these stories took place in an ancient context, rich with culture and customs that are completely unfamiliar to us in the western world. If the story is pointing out a detail, make a note of it. If something in the story seems weird, slow down. Don’t rush past it. Sit with it. This is how you’ll begin to see the patterns, connections, callbacks, and literary devices that occur throughout. At the forefront of your list of observations is noticing where God is in what you’re reading. Is God pleased or displeased? Frustrated? Silent? Invisible? Physically present? There is not a story in the bible that does not point to the character of God. But in order to notice where is, we have to practice noticing God in the story every chance we get. For those of us who have been trained to pay attention to people, this can take some re-training.

• Inquiry: To me, the essence of childlike faith is asking “why” over and over. Why did God say that? Did God say that? Why did God address one thing, but not another? What is most important to God in this situation? How does this story help the reader understand who God is and what God is like? The reality is that the bible is a sneak peak into the story, but we readers/hearers are not given all the details. I am of the school of thought that any time one reads scripture we should be noticing new observations, asking questions of the text. So, any time you read a passage, practice making a list of 3 observations. Then, make a list of 3 questions.

  Some of us grown-ups need to remember how to practice wondering. With Alexa and Google at our fingertips, we forget how accustomed we’ve become to easy, instantaneous responses. But with the bible, many of our questions will remain unanswered. The tension will remain. We have to resist the urge to relieve the tension but recognizing that we can wonder and acknowledge that we aren’t always going to know it all. Importantly, we don’t need to reduce this tension to “well God has a plan” or “we need to trust more.” No. We can let the hard parts of the bible remain mysterious. We can even honestly say “I don’t like this. I don’t understand it and I don’t like it.” Instead of seeking to understand, we can seek to revere. We can seek to wonder more faithfully, and we can seek to imagine. Instead of idolizing answers, practicing inquiry invites us to ask questions that aid the ways grow in dependency on God.

• Imagination: We noted before that the story of scripture is filled with holes in the narrative. Characters are left out or remain unnamed. We don’t know what they were wearing or what they looked like. We don’t know what the weather was like that day. So, an important part of imagination is to acknowledge where we have imagined something that isn’t explicitly there, and also what our cultural biases might be. Again, this step forces us to slow down. What was going through this person’s brain? What would have happened had X happened instead of Y? What would have happened had this person simply done what God had instructed them to do? Think about your senses. How can the story come alive through the ways in which we imagine the colors, smells, and textures?

• And lastly, we come to interpretation. As we weave together our observations, our questions, and our holy imagination and seek to harmonize them through the lens of our guiding focus “who is God, and what is God like, here” we come away from the text with something that teaches us about God. This is the goal, intellectual worship. Hermeneutical focus. Discipline in community.

Now, you may notice I left out application. And I did that on purpose. Because if scripture is sufficient for all of life and teaching, then reducing the grand meta-narrative to a mere moralistic takeaway, or an alliterative leadership bullet point is harmful on so many levels. For believers, scripture is intended to point us to God, over and over. It’s not intended to shape us without the guidance of the holy spirit. This is why anyone, even non-Christians can read the bible and find something useful, but for believers, we are living and breathing these words because they aid us in remaining connected to our very source of life. But scripture is not a commodity. It’s not a collection of inspirational sayings or useful tidbits. Scripture is holy. Its purpose isn’t to benefit us on our own terms, its purpose is to invite us to depend on a God who has proved himself in this book to be faithful, trustworthy, and true, which is why we worship God, not the text. But the more we settle for the idolatry of an easy application on our own terms, the less we will remember those true things about God that are designed to draw us near to God when we need God the most.  

So next time you crack open your bible, I hope you’ll give some of these suggestions a try. And I’d love to hear your thoughts too. How were you taught to read the bible? Do you catch yourself centering yourself in the story? Has it been a challenge to break the habit? How has your appreciation for the bible grown after you stopped reducing it to a list of do’s and don’ts? How has your faith grown for the better? Keep the conversation going below.

As always, thanks for supporting my work, and I hope your transition into the new year is smooth.

Be blessed, friends.