Bible reading commandment

Commandment Nine: Remember that the Bible should be read at face value.

The books of the Bible are plain enough if they are read and allowed to say what they say. For some reason, readers of the Bible want the Bible to say what they want it to say or expect it to say.
When it doesn’t live up to their preconceived notions, they assume that the Bible cannot mean what it says.
Some say, “The Bible means what it means and not what it says.” This is making something out of nothing.
The writers of the books of the Bible had simple communication in mind. They did not have mysterious meanings interwoven throughout the words that would have to be decoded thousands of years later.
They did not have secret codes and ulterior motives. They wrote accounts of acts, deeds, and words that they believed to be true and that needed to be passed on to those who wanted to know God. The idea that the writers of the books of the Bible did not mean what they said has led to many very odd interpretations of what the words say on the page.
The greatest disaster to reading and understanding the Bible is to attempt to understand the Bible in a more complex way that the writers meant.
Modern day readers have expectations of the Bible and the God presented and revealed there. For instance, many people believe that God is fair. They assume that since the modern culture appreciates and lauds fairness God must be fair.
If the Bible books present a picture of God that does not fit the idea of fairness in the modern mind, it is concluded that the writers did not mean what they wrote.
Some say that the writers were overburdened with their own cultural baggage and that God had to use what he could get at the time and was forced to let the writers of the Bible see him like he isn’t.
This idea has the notion behind it that the people in the Bible days were less intelligent than the modern man. Or at least the writers were not enlightened to what is the real God. In this way, the plain words of the Bible are discounted when they disagree with the notions of the modern reader.
Another example is niceness.
In modern culture, it is expected of everyone to be nice.
It is commonly assumed that Christians should be the nicest of all because of the perceived passivity of the Christian ethic.
Therefore, if the followers of the God of the Bible are to be nice, it would follow that the God of the Bible would have to be the “supreme nice.”
So when such a reader approaches the Bible and finds a not- so-nice God portrayed, they assume that the Bible is wrong. In this way, again, common expectations of who God is and what God is like shape the way that readers of the Bible understand the plain words on the page.
Such a reader reads something in the Bible that disagrees with their preconceived notions about the Bible, then they are forced to say, “The Bible can’t mean that.” So their notion about what the Bible is supposed to say outweighs what the Bible does say.
This may lead to great confusion and misunderstanding and a denial of God’s truth.
The only way to honestly read the Bible is to read the words and have all preconceived notions conform to them. If the Bible presents something unexpected or new, it is the place of the reader to shape their preconception to what is on the page.
Many people are not willing to do this. They would rather let the Bible be wrong than to challenge their own preconceptions about the Bible
People who do not understand this principle of simplicity and face value will read something in the Bible and say, “God wouldn’t do that.”
The question has to be asked, “How do you know that God wouldn’t do that?”
Since the Bible claims to reveal God, and the only way to know God, according to the Bible, is the Bible, then the only way anyone can conclude what God will and won’t do is to find out what is revealed in the Bible.
Therefore, if one chooses to read the Bible and believe it, one must believe all of it. If one chooses to reject the Bible, then one must not claim to be a believer in the Bible.
Most Christians come to the Bible with a wealth of ideas and preconceptions about who God is and what God is like. Some of the preconceptions include the following:
God is nice to everyone. God would not hurt anyone. God understands people with compassion no matter what. God forgives everyone no matter what. God wants his people to get along no matter what. God sees all human beings as equal. God loves and defends freedom as in a democracy. God makes no distinction between male and female. God is sexless. God does not have a body. God comes to people in different ways. God is personal and treats each individual personally and specifically. God never changes. God knows everything. God is everywhere at all times in everything. God can do anything without trying. God would never take revenge. God wants everyone to be happy. God lives to serve human beings. God overlooks sin because he understands that humans cannot help themselves. God can be approached many ways. God loves sincerity above all things and will never reject anyone who is sincere. God would never kill anyone. God makes or lets everything happen. God has a reason for everything. God hears the prayers of everyone. God loves children better than adults and defends the children.
God would never hurt a child. God appreciates a good try even if the effort is a failure. God speaks to some people directly nowadays. God is not jealous. God never gets angry. God never forgets. God will let all people into heaven in the end. God doesn’t mind getting walked on. God is sweet like a grandma or grandpa. God uses pain to teach people lessons. God is consumed with teaching people lessons. God watches everything everyone does. God never judges anyone except the people that modern society thinks that he should.
This is a short list of the preconceptions that readers of the Bible have collected about the God revealed in the Bible. Unfortunately for such a reader, there are places in the books of the Bible where God is revealed in ways that directly contradict the entire list above.
The modern reader simply cannot accept the challenge to the modern ethic of who God needs to be and, therefore, discredits the Bible.
It is my contention that this way of thinking isn’t fair to the
Bible.
It is one thing to reject the Bible altogether as a serious revelation of God; it is another to try to make the books of the Bible abide by a modern set of ethics and force the writers of the
Bible to say things that they never said in order to satisfy the religious inertia of the modern reader.
Many modern readers so believe and have accepted their preconceptions that they assume the Bible could never contradict those conceptions. They seem to believe that what they think the Bible says is what the Bible says. They attempt to interpret the Bible through very cloudy cultural glasses.
Anyone who says differently is disqualified. They are dismissed with “I have never heard that before,” or “The Bible would never say that.” This proves that those who say these things have not read the Bible or they would be shocked at the misconceptions that they hold.
What they mean is this: “I have never read the Bible, but I have a good idea of what the Bible would and would not teach. Therefore, I do not have to read the Bible to know what it says. I just have to read the Bible to get the details, but I already know what it says.”
This is naive ignorance. No other book or set of books would be treated this way. Most people really do believe, without ever having read the Bible, that they know what the Bible says.
When they do read the Bible for themselves and their preconceptions are challenged, they imagine that they are not wise enough to read the Bible, or that there must be some interpretational quirk which once they learn will remove the problem.