Have you ever set out to read Scripture in a new way? Maybe you committed to a daily reading plan, or you and some friends set out to study a book together. You took it on with excitement, confident that you’d stay the course.
But after a little while, the enthusiasm began to wane. Maybe guilt set in because you weren’t keeping up with your reading plan, or you felt ashamed by the confusion or lack of interest you felt while reading.
In “One Easy Trick to See If You’re Reading the Bible Right,” Adam Stevenson shares that St. Augustine once wrote that reading the Bible rightly would produce “a double love of God and neighbor.”
How? By saturating our hearts in the truth of the One to whom the Scriptures testify.
“Like John, with Scripture in one hand, and pointing to Christ with the other, we are made to bear witness to Christ,” Stevenson writes. “All our reading, studying, struggling, debating, living, and even dying can be animated by this task: testifying to Christ.”
Recalling that Scripture is not merely a list of stories or rules, but a testimony to the person of Jesus may not be the magic solution that motivates us to slog our way through Leviticus. But perhaps the question we can ask ourselves—do I have a double love for God and my neighbor?—can tether our hearts to the Bible in a way that keeps us coming back, verse by verse, again and again.
