A woman opened the Bible to any old page and, without looking, pointed with a finger at a verse. According to her, this would be the word of God for her day, which was just beginning. "Judas, leaving from there, went out and hung himself." Well, if this one wouldn't suffice, she would have to find another verse. She closed the Bible, opened it anew, and her finger pointed to, "Go ye and do likewise." This little story serves to illustrate, with humor, the dangerous habit, in existence even today among our faithful, of reading the Bible as if it were a book of recipes, of magic formulas, of enchantments, or things of this sort. Therefore, it is appropriate to reaffirm what the Bible is, what kind of reading we can do in it, to the end that it not be this: a storage box full of sayings that we open in order to search for easy and immediate answers to our problems, which are many times excessively petty.

The Bible Is The Story Of A God Who Is Revealed Talking To And Acting With A People

Long ago the Bible stopped being considered a chest full of doctrines or truths simply dictated by God to the people, as if divine revelation was a meteorite that fell from the sky. In the Bible God appears, above all, as someone who acts: in the alliance which God makes with the people for the conquest of land and liberty, and, in the manner in which God is revealed, through Jesus, God's son, as near and loving towards all in terms of liberation. This liberation is already a human triumph, but it will be completed by God in the future world. In the entire Bible God acts and speaks, or more correctly, God speaks by actions and acts by speaking, because the word of God is not just a sound, but also a concrete act. (The Hebrew term "dabar" means both "word" and "event".) It's worthwhile for us to remember that, in the first page of the Old Testament, God creates everything through the power of the Word.

God is revealed acting and walks with a people who also act, creating history. To read the Bible, therefore, is to take into account this story of God with a people. And it is to read the story of Jesus, incarnate among us and, it is to open ourselves, through Christ's words and deeds, to God's revelations. In other words, it is to understand how God was revealed and what God revealed to a people of the Bible, as well as to understand how God is revealed and what God reveals to us today.

To read the Bible without considering this story, to read a passage without being careful to understand its context, in other words, why the text was written and to what end, is to fall into reading in an individualistic manner. In such an individualistic reading, a person has only in mind his/her own life and seeks from the Bible an answer or illumination to his/her own personal situation. The Bible will never give answers to isolated individuals, because it is the fruit of a community walk.

To fail to consider the history and the walk of the Biblical people is also to fall into a fundamentalist reading; to the letter of the law, completely ignoring the help which social sciences, history, linguistics, and even archeology afford in the comprehension of the Bible. For example, to read the 2 creation stories in the first chapters of Genesis as a historical report would be at least as silly as continuing to believe in the stork and Father Christmas...

The preferred manner of reading the Bible in Latin America, and particularly in Brazil, brought about the birth of the method known as "popular reading". For whomever is interested in a "popular reading" of the Bible, what is important is not so much to understand the Bible, but to understand life, finding in the Bible the required light for understanding life. Reactionary circles criticize this method, labeling it Marxist, for departing from the Word of God, and even from reality itself. This just isn't true...As if we could have read the Bible while flying on a pair of wings above our reality...Just like the story of a people with its God, it would be totally preposterous to read the Biblical text without bringing to it our lives, our stories...

Why, With Whom And How To Read The Bible?

Finally, from all this we can raise 3 fundamental questions about reading the Bible, which have to do with the intended result, the people involved in the discussion, and the method:

1. What is the goal of reading the Bible?
2. With whom is it to be read?
3. How should it be read?

We read the Bible so that it will illuminate our lives: this is the principal goal. We always read the Bible taking into account the collective, community dimension. Even when we read individually we are taking into account the story of the marginalized and oppressed of the Biblical times, who were in search of liberty and land, and we are taking into account the story of the marginalized and oppressed of today. Above all, the desire is that the Bible illuminates our lives, the lives of everyone. This is because it deals with a collective, community pledge, which presupposes the personal pledge.

We read the Bible open to the Biblical studies which the experts are doing, because these studies aim to make ever smaller the natural barriers which exist when a text is read which was written more than 2000 years ago, in different surroundings, in a different culture, in another language, with literary styles different than our own...

This assistance is what we call hermeneutical mediation, which seeks to augment the comprehension of the text, without the presumption of extracting all its meaning. This is because the Bible is an inexhaustible font of messages and light for our lives, which no science ever will be capable of encompassing. For the individual and community reading, made with the eyes of faith, is the selfsame Holy Spirit, whose actions make it possible for us to penetrate the mystery which is the plan of God, revealed in Jesus Christ. A mystery/plan already revealed, but subject to comprehension only to the extent that we commit to it and experience it in our own lives. That is, it is one thing to know the path, but it is another to follow it. Only when we follow it can we truly know it...because, the road is made by the journey...

The author of this material is Reverend Luiz Fernando Pereira Garupe, pastor of Emaús Metropolitan Community Church in São Paulo, Brazil.