Stop Reading Devotionals...?
A Bible Illiteracy Story.
A well respected math professor walks through the corridor of his elite university.
“Professor, what a serendipitous moment!” an admissions counselor calls out as he walks a group of young boys towards the esteemed teacher.
The admissions counselor nods to one of the boys and the young boy says with a grin, “We are here touring and have heard such great things about you…” He fishes a folded piece of paper from his pocket. “Our teacher said that if we saw you we should ask if you could help us with this assignment…?”
“Of course,” the professor says charitably as he takes the sheet of paper and sits on the bench nearby. The boys gather in close as the admissions counselor whips out his phone in hopes to capture a candid photo that the Marketing Department can use.
“Ah, yes,” the professor says as he eyes the very simple calculus problem. “You see, the function is across the top here and we have to find the first derivative of it…”
He writes out the notation on the sheet of paper and the boys scribble their notes rapidly. “This will give us the slope, which is M, and we are ultimately hoping to find where M equals zero… so we start by taking the first exponent of the quadratic equation, in this case, 2....”
“Ah,” the boys say as they scribble some more.
“Then we are going to multiply it by the negative in front of the X, which is negative one-”
“Sorry to interrupt,” one boy says respectfully with a confused look on his face.
The professor smiles to himself as he realizes how he has gotten used to teaching college-age math majors. “Perhaps I am going a bit fast…” he thinks to himself.
“Not a problem at all,” he turns to the boy and tries not to look at the annoying admissions counselor who is now squatting to get a new angle. “What can I clarify?”
The boy looks at the others in his group and all of them nod nervously as if they are thinking the same thing. He turns back to the professor with a little more confidence and asks, “What exactly do you mean when you say multiply?”
When it came to knowing things about Christianity, I have felt like the math professor most of my life.
As a kid who grew up in a Bible-preaching church, it baffled me how some people who identified as Christians didn’t know some of the core basics I assumed were pre-requisites to calling yourself a Christian.
Basic things like: “The Father, The Son (Jesus), and The Holy Spirit make up the Trinity,” and “Don’t watch porn,” and “Getting intoxicated is… bad!” and “You should stay away from Mediums,” and “Jesus rose from the dead.”
The list went on.
Different interactions with green believers left me with different emotions. Sometimes I was sad for them because whatever church they belonged to had failed them so miserably. Sometimes I was happy that God used me to teach them something new. Sometimes I was frustrated because I wasn’t able to answer their questions like I wanted to.
But a lot of the time I walked away angry.
Why? Because I knew some of them didn’t actually care what the Bible had to say regarding pretty much anything. The version of Jesus they were sold was like a genie in a bottle that they got to call upon whenever they were in a pinch; a tool they could pull from their toolbelt to help build the life they wanted for themselves.
He was not God to them like He was to me.
You see, I had attended church and paid attention to the sermons as far back as I could remember. Youth Group was my home away from home before graduation and at my Christian college I took some phenomenal required faith classes.
Sometimes I felt like I knew so much compared to some other believers that it felt like we weren’t even talking about, or part of, the same religion.
So imagine my surprise - no - imagine my EGO’S surprise - when I realized recently that I am not the math professor, but I, the one who felt so smart in the past, am actually the high schooler who doesn’t even know how to multiply.
Ouch.
At first I didn’t want to believe that I was Biblically illiterate.
“Surely this must be a mistake!” I thought. “Look at how many sermons I have listened to! How many Christian podcasts I have streamed! How many books from Christian authors I have read!”
My mind flashed back to this summer. A woman I knew was talking about the amount of Bible illiteracy there was among Christians.
“So true, so true,” I said as I nodded along in agreement, internally patting my ego on the back.
I look back on that moment and shudder - I was such a fool!
You see, in January of this year I was reading a devotional on Rahab (one of my favorite stories) and the author suggested we read the part of Joshua 2 where Rahab’s example of faith is mentioned.
After I finished reading the passage, a strange idea popped into my head:
“What if… now I know this sounds crazy, but… what if I KEPT READING to the fall of Jericho?”
To my surprise, there was a very big miracle that happened in between the two events that I didn’t know about: the crossing of the Jordan!
“Huh…” I finished the section about Jericho falling (a story I had read many times before). It was impossible to deny that a vague, new feeling was starting to emerge. “Maybe I should… keep reading…?”
As I read just a little further, I encountered Achan’s story (which… yikes). I paused as the new feeling started to reveal itself as confusion. “Achan’s story is clearly connected to the story of Jericho - why have I never heard of it before!?”
Finally my curiosity kicked in and I kept reading and reading and reading until I finished all 24 chapters of Joshua (which, in case you were wondering, did not take nearly as long as I assumed it would).
After I finished the final sentence, I sat dumbfounded.
My view of my high Biblical knowledge was officially crushed.
“How can this be…?” I thought as my mind raced through all of the things I have read and listened to in the past. “How have I - ME! The smart one?!?- never heard of these stories?”
I think I figured it out. There’s a phenomenon out there called The Dunning-Kruger Effect.
In essence, it says that people don’t know what they don’t know. It says that if you asked a bunch of adults from various education levels to rank where they fell on the grand spectrum of intelligence, the less educated person would rank themselves higher on the scale than the more educated person because they aren’t aware of all the stuff they have yet to learn.
I personified this to a T; the more of the Bible I actually read, the more I realized I didn’t know. (I now put myself much closer to the Biblically illiterate side of the spectrum - ha!)
Embarrassingly humbled, I asked myself, “How did this happen? How did I know so little for so long? And how is that little amount I knew STILL substantially more than most Christians I talk to know?!”
Was it the churches I attended? No, they all encouraged me to read my Bible.
Was it a poor memory? No, I’m pretty sure I would’ve remembered Achan’s whole family being stoned to death as a consequence of his actions.
Was it that I didn’t care what the Bible said? While I think some people mistakenly think they can be a Bible-less believer, I never have subscribed to that mindset (especially in this new ‘reignited’ chapter of my faith that started in 2022).
So what happened?
I think, if I’m honest with myself, I fell into the same trap most Christians find themselves in today: we are very busy bees who “get more” from devotionals, sermons, podcasts, books, and yes, blogs like this, than we get from actually reading the Bible at all, but especially in its entirety.
Make no mistake - I have read countless passages from the Bible that connected back to some writing or sermon. I would read the passage, think, “...That’s great!” and then continue on my merry little way. I heard the main talking points and stories over and over again, but I didn’t know the full context, history, or important foundation they were built upon.
To give myself some credit, I have tried annual reading plans before. However, they always fell flat because I couldn’t keep up and they quickly became a chore. Unsurprisingly, I would quit and pivot to listening to sermons or reading books by great Christian authors that would give me passages to look up in the Bible.
While all of those writings and sermons were very good, I now realize that I was elevating them to be my primary way to learn about God. I now know that they should come after, waaaaay after, me reading, studying, and digesting the Bible as God intended it to be read: as a whole.
I didn’t realize that the authors / speakers that I loved so much never intended their work to be what I was elevating it to be. These creators are very Bible literate - they live by example and let the works they create overflow from their Bible time; not take place of it.
If I went to Lysa TerKeurst and said, “I love your book ‘Good Boundaries and Goodbyes’ - is that ok if I read it instead of my Bible?”
Or if I went to my pastor and said, “Wow! That sermon was great. Is that ok if I just keep listening to your past sermons instead of reading my Bible?”
I’m sure they’d both give me a resounding, "ABSOLUTELY NOT!”
“Bible Replacement” is never the intention of any Christian worth their salt who puts out a book / blog / sermon / etc. And yet, how many of us - myself at the front of the line - treat these ancillary (extra, supplementary, additional) things as the main thing?
How many of us have metaphorically been eating the frosting off of the cake to the point where we don’t even remember there is a cake underneath it?
But the cake (Bible) is really important. The sermon linked below mentions that the Bible is a library of different books. All together those books are what we call the Word of God. Whether we like it or not, believers are commanded by God to study His Word; to keep it close to our hearts and think about it often. He means the whole kit and kaboodle, not just the top 50 most popular passages.
Passages, I might add, that are all connected to the whole Bible. They are part of one continuous narrative.
Passages, I might add, that were almost always written by various authors with the assumption that you already knew the stuff written before their book came out. (For example: Joshua made the correct assumption that his initial audience - The Israelites - were already well versed in the things that Moses wrote about in the Torah, which was written before his book).
I’ve been seeing the Bible in technicolor since I’ve made “the switch.” Sure, I am still reading and watching Christian things, but they are mostly focused on helping me learn more about the full book of the Bible that I’m currently working through. No more short passages here!
Now I am reading a few chapters a day of one book until I finish it. I am finally reading to learn (not just check a box), which means I am giving myself the grace to go SLOW.
This slowness has allowed me to start making some big connections, but it also has led to a lot of questions that the old me wouldn’t take the time to dig into. Thankfully as these questions come up, I am blessed by Saint Google (ha!) and all the (reputable) sources on Google that have not left a single question of mine unanswered.
I have loved watching The Bible Recap videos that help give context and history to chunks of chapters at a time. And you don’t have to start with Genesis! Pick a book and dig in!
But… you should make sure you get to Genesis, and all of the books, eventually. And know that (for the first time in my life) I will be on the journey with you doing the same thing.
So, do you need to throw all of those devotional books out?
No.
Is it bad to listen to podcasts or sermons during the week?
Of course not.
Should we remember that all of those things are supposed to come after we have spent quality time studying the Bible?
Definitely.
Bible Chapter: Deuteronomy 4
Worship Song: The Heart of Worship
Sermon:
Thanks for reading! If you have any comments you’d like to share, simply reply to this email if you are reading this in your inbox. However, if you are on the Substack app / website, feel free to email me at Miki@mikispeer.com
Please note: For all URL attachments, I do review the songs / sermons before I post them. However, I do not have the time to research every pastor / speaker / church that is associated with the URL link. So! Take the video / song at face value lol.
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