When you read a book do you just read it without context or concern for the author?
Do you find out about the author and their own story?
Do you explore the influences and relationships that may have shaped the author?
Do you wonder about when it was written and why?
Do you think about the original audience who may have taken up the book before you?
Do you look up unfamiliar places on a map?
Do you read the preface and dedications?
Do you explore how other readers experienced the book and may have critiqued it?
Do you explore the cultural perspectives of the people who inhabit the pages of the book?
Read A Book!
All of these practices are like washing your hands. Let’s call it reading hygiene. I know one can just read the book anyway without any thought to these matters. However, habits of reading hygiene will also help when you take up the newspaper, read an email, watch a YouTube video, read a tweet, or even read the Bible.
Maybe you don’t read critically all the time. I get it, we don’t turn on our “observing self” all time. However, maybe you can start with it when you pick up the book and then leave it. Maybe you could get to the end of the book and then decide you’d better wash your hands, or “wash your mind.” But then, you have already consumed the delicacies of what was presented with the germs of your assumptions, proclivity for preoccupation with self, and de-contextualized readings.
Read The Bible
Interested in developing your reading hygiene with the Bible? Here’s some books you might find helpful.
How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, 4th Edition, Gordon D. Fee & Douglas Stuart
How to Read the Bible Book by Book, Garden D. Fee & Douglas Stuart
Read the Bible for Life, George H. Guthrie
Guerrilla Gospel: Reading the Bible for Liberation in the Power of the Spirit, by Bob Ekblad