Never Read a Bible Verse

One of the most important lessons that I can pass on to everyone is that we should never read a Bible verse. Huh? Never read a Bible verse. We can’t single out one line out of any part of the Bible, and expect to understand what is going on in the context. Instead, we must read the whole paragraph at least. If we read the paragraph, we get an understanding of what the context is. We don’t speak in single-sentence paragraphs, do we? If you take one sentence out of a speech, or a letter, you could really misinterpret what is being said. I have an example of just that below.

“One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.” If someone in the future read this sentence, and tried to extrapolate (or pull) and understanding of what this is about, maybe they would think that Negro’s lived on an island all by themselves. What a horrible life, to be segregated onto an island, just because of their skin color. Not only are they on an island all by themselves, but they are the poorest island of the group, being surrounded by prosperous island nations.

Do you see how dangerous, or silly, just reading one sentence can get? The sentence in quotes is from the “I Have A Dream” speech, by Martin Luther King Jr. Now, understanding the author, and the relevance, would you think he was talking specifically about an island? No. That’s my main point here: we can’t just expect to understand the Bible with a simple glance at one verse here or there. There is so much history, culture and play on words going on, that we have to be smart about what we read. English is a tricky language, and there is so much we can do with inflection, and implications, that without understanding what the rest of the subject is, we can get lost.

Meaning always flows from the top down, and not the other way. We always start communication with the big idea first, and work our way to the details. You don’t start talking about the hockey game last night by opening a conversation with this: “Oh man, that was the best save Backstrom ever had!” What are you talking about, would be my thought. You need to start with the big ideas first in communication.

Don’t forget, individual words don’t always hold the key meaning of any verse in the Bible. Words, on their own, can be important, but the paragraph and context is always going to point out the intent of any author. Remember, when the people wrote the Bible, they did not have the numbers for verses written there. Again, they did not write verse numbers in their books. This happened hundreds of years later.

So how can we read the Bible and get an understanding of what’s going on? First, understand what kind of book you’re reading. Is it a historical book, poetry, proverbs, prophesy? What idea is being developed in the book? What’s the point of the chapter? If you start out from a wide look, and then zoom in, you can’t go wrong in understanding what’s going on!