The Whole Counsel of God
I’m going to do something with this article that I don’t normally do. I’m not good at it, and it rarely works out when I try to do it. Nevertheless, I have a purpose in making the attempt this time, despite the weighty obstacle that this is for me.
I’m going to try to do math.
First, some context: I am in the process of reading the whole Bible in two and a half months. I know, I know – that’s a ton of reading (don’t worry, we’ll come back to that statement). Again, however, I have a purpose in doing so. For our fall quarter, I am teaching a class for our youth group, new converts, and any other adults who just want a refresher that will basically be a three-month overview of the Bible. We’ll be going through the Bible by characters and attempting to overview the entire thing in one quarter (If you’re visiting us in the fall, you should definitely come!). Given that, I didn’t want to try and overview a book that I myself haven’t read recently. I started this read-through a couple of weeks ago, and the goal is to finish by the end of September (I didn’t think it was a realistic goal to finish before the class started, but I can certainly finish well before it ends).
I began the trek a couple weeks ago in Genesis and read the first 24 chapters (basically through the end of Abraham’s life) in about an hour. Already I was seeing things in the text I had never noticed before. Already I was making connections to the story of Christ in the stories of Genesis I had never made before. I was amazed by how much easier it was to understand what was going on when I wasn’t chopping the reading up into tiny passages and was actually letting the whole of the narrative speak for itself. Needless to say, this reading was incredibly beneficial to me, and continuing to read large chunks of the Bible in one sitting has continued to yield incredible insights. If you want to better understand the picture that the Bible is painting, my best recommendation based on this experience is to read more than two chapters at a time.
After I stopped in Genesis 24, I started to wonder to myself: If I kept up that pace, how long would it take me to finish the Bible? This is where the math comes in. There are 1,189 chapters in the Bible. Divide that by the 24 chapters I had read in that sitting, and I think you get about 49.5 (again, this isn’t my strong suit). If I were to keep pace, it would take me about 50 hours of reading time to finish the Bible. This tells me two things. One, read an hour a day and I’ll finish in 50 days. Two – if I’ve got my proportions right – read about 35 minutes a day (a little over half of what I did already) and I’ll finish in roughly three months.
I’ve been told I’m a fast reader, so let’s say that 35 minutes of reading gets the average reader about 10 chapters of reading rather than the 13-14 I was averaging. Dividing by 10 is a lot easier than dividing by 13; with 1189 chapters, 35 minutes a day would get you through the Bible in 119 days, just shy of 4 months. Bump that up to an hour (roughly 17 chapters) and you’re looking at 70 days. So what’s the point of all these numbers?
Replace one episode of TV with time for reading the Bible, and there’s no reason why the average person couldn’t read the whole thing in four months.
That’s three read-throughs a year.
I’m not saying that missing one or more days of Bible reading means that anyone is a bad Christian; I myself have missed a couple of days since starting this reading, and I’m a single guy who lives alone. Life happens, and that’s OK. I’m also not saying that the routine of reading should be more important than the reading itself. If we’re just reading the Bible to check it off the box of things to do for the day, we are missing the point of why God gave us His Word in the first place. I’m also not saying that reading the Bible is the one-step solution to all of life’s problems. For one thing, reading, studying, and meditating on Scripture all have their own benefits; for another thing, none of those three practices have any benefit at all when the Scriptures are not applied thoughtfully to the situations in which we find ourselves.
I am saying that most if not all of us have the time to read and better understand the Bible, if we choose to prioritize it.
“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” ~ 2 Timothy 3:16-17
AUTHOR: Luke Tatum