Bible reading commandment

Commandment Ten: Remember that the Bible is not a Human ‘User’s Manual.’

Some go so far as to say that the Bible is “the human user’s manual” or a “guidebook for life.”
The Bible never claims to be such a thing. It is not arranged to be a manual or guidebook.
Therefore, the preacher must use ingenuity to manufacture from the Bible what it was never meant to be or do. The common reader is then confused and demoralized, thinking that they will never have the eyes to see the secrets.
Usually this is because the average person can barely see the validity of the so-called keys the preacher has found and comes to the conclusion that if the Bible is that arcane and hard to understand, then it would be hopeless to read it and expect much benefit.
Such preachers make the Bible a book of sound advice, filled with secrets that only the dedicated and gifted can mine. This isn’t true.
The Bible is a set of books that are meant to be read.
Remember, the writers of the Bible meant to communicate what they saw or were told. They never meant to weave secrets and keys in and out of the cloth of the Bible.
Inventive and creative preachers wind up forcing God to give advice through the mouths of long-dead witnesses who had
nothing more in mind than passing on what they had been given by God. They did not have keys and manuals in mind. If the Bible is a manual, it is one of the worst and most confusing manuals on one of the most important subjects.
God is not writing a user manual in a language that is not his mother tongue.
It does not take a genius to understand the Bible. Millions of simple people have understood it and believed it for thousands of years without the aid of keys and secret lists of do’s and don’t’s.
Such things are only calculated to mystify the uninformed and make money on the confusion and hopelessness of people in the name of God. No more and no less.
If someone tries to make the Bible say things and imply things that it does not, that person misrepresents God and those who wrote what they were told or saw.
They are creative, but they are more like English literature commentators and less like those entrusted to pass along the revelation of himself that God saw fit to give to men throughout the centuries.
Those who make the Bible say things that it doesn’t say make the Bible seem like it implies things that it doesn’t explicitly say.
If that were true, the Bible would be nearly non- understandable. It would mean that the Bible is a veneer. That it
does not mean what it says, but is a veil for the truth for those who have special eyes to see.
This isn’t the way the Bible writers portrayed what they were passing on.
Remember, the Bible writers felt the responsibility to pass along the communication of God to others. They did not have some mystical notion in mind. They meant to communicate. That means that, although the Spirit of God did assist them, they did not write something mysterious.
It required the infinite genius of God to write the Bible, but it doesn’t take a genius to understand it.