In his book Life Together Bonhoeffer makes some comments about personal Bible reading and Bible reading in smaller groups and families. He believes that the tendency to read smaller and smaller portions of scripture is very dangerous. Minimum, for Bonhoeffer, is for people to be reading 1 chapter of the Old Testament and at least half a chapter from the New both morning and evening. His grounds for this view isn’t really any sort of legalism but is instead based on the absolute importance of Scripture.
“When the practice is first tried, of course, most people will find even this modest measure too much and will offer resistence. It will be objected that it is impossible to take in and retain such an abundance of ideas and associations, that it even shows disrespect for God’s Word to read more than one can seriously assimilate. These objections will cause us quite readily to content ourselves again with reading only verses.
“In truth, however, there lurks in this attitude a grave error. If it is really true that it is hard for us, as adult Christians, to comprehend even a chapter of the Old Testament in sequence, then this can only fill us with profound shame; what kind of testimony is that to our knowledge of the Scriptures and all our previous reading of them? If we were familiar with the substance of what we read we should be able to follow a chapter without difficulty, especially if we have an open Bible in our hands and participate in the reading. But, of course, we must admit that the Scriptures are still largely unkown to us. Can the realization of our fault, our ignorance of the Word of God, have any other consequence than that we should earnestly and faithfully retrieve what has been neglected? And should not ministers be the very first to get to work at this point?
“[…] Not only the young Christian but also the adult Christian will complain that the Scripture reading is often too long for him and that much therein he does not understand. To this it must be said that for the mature Christian every Scripture reading will be ‘too long’, even the shortest one.
If you know who took this photo let me know so I can give them the credit.
Most people live their lives believing three lies: 1) That they’re a good driver; 2) that they’re funny; and 3) that they’re a good listener.
One of the facets he deals with is that when it comes to loving people, how we go at actually listening is key. Almost everyone thinks that they’re a good listener. But Bonhoeffer’s view comes as a stinging rebuke to most of us. Who hasn’t listened like this at some point? Maybe this is how you normally listen to people.
How we listen really matters.