Better Ways to Read the Bible

A book I love by an author I love more.

Every once in a while a book comes out and I think, “Dang, that’s a great title.”

Not only do I love the title, Better Ways to Read the Bible, but I love what the title is saying.

Because yes, we do in fact need better ways to read the Bible. (And when I say “we” there, I mostly mean, any of us who grew up in or are still connected to highly fear based and/or fundamentalist religions. For me, that was the evangelical world of conservative Baptists).

So much of my work over the years is about helping people (if and when they’re ready) see that while the Bible has grossly been misused as a weapon (especially to hurt the most vulnerable), it doesn’t have to be that way.

But in order for us to come to the text and see what else is there for us, we must come to it differently. Using a different set of interpretive lenses.

That’s where Zach’s book comes in.

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My friend Zach Lambert, pastor of Restore Austin—a church where anyone has a seat at the table—just released his first book and I’m so stinking proud of him.

Instead of me gushing about Zach and his book, I asked him if he would share a portion of Better Ways with us.

So here is an excerpt that, I think, perfectly encapsulates what this book is AND WHY YOU SHOULD GET IT :)

Congrats, Zach. You did good.

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Everyone who reads and interprets the Bible does so with a set of assumptions about what the Bible is and how it’s supposed to work.

This set of assumptions functions like a filter or a lens through which the reader attempts to make meaning. Although everyone reads the Bible through a lens (or set of lenses)—there is no neutral or unfiltered way to read it—many people are unaware that they’re doing so and have never stopped to take stock of the assumptions they bring to the text and how those assumptions impact interpretations.

As a new pastor, I began to look at the ways I had been taught to read the Bible, including all the assumptions I’d inherited during my childhood and young adulthood. That’s when I began to see that I had learned to read the Bible through four distinct lenses that often lead to harm:

1. The literalism lens: “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.”
   

2. The apocalypse lens: “It’s all gonna burn anyway.”
   

3. The moralism lens: “Well, that’s not biblical.”
   

4. The hierarchy lens: “Submit to authority as you submit to God.”

Next, I began to study how other Bible readers in both ancient and modern times—from Jesuits in Latin America to the Black Church in the United States to Christian mystics of the Greco-Roman world—interpreted Scripture. I noticed that their ways of reading the Bible had historically led to greater spiritual wisdom, personal freedom, and communal flourishing. Their common assumptions formed the basis of what I began to call “healthy lenses”:

1. The Jesus lens: “The Scriptures point to me.”
   

2. The context lens: “The one who seeks will find.”
   

3. The flourishing lens: “I have come that they may have life abundantly.”
   

4. The fruitfulness lens: “By their fruit you will recognize them.”

For more than a decade, the Restore community has learned how to move away from the harmful lenses and lean into these four healthy lenses. We’ve tested and tried them in Sunday morning sermons, small group discussions, Bible classes, and conversations between friends. And the results have been stunning: People have been set free from toxic interpretations, wounds have been healed, and our community has begun to live out a version of Christianity that actually looks like Jesus.