Andrew Faris has a great post about the aridity he feels in reading the Bible:... most times I don't feel anything when I read my Bible. Nothing seems to change. I still fight my same old battles with lust, pride, selfishness, a foul mouth, and so on. "This is the Word of God," I tell myself, "so why don't I notice it doing its work in my life?" Why doesn't anything really happen when I read my Bible?Honest stuff. Andrew goes on to consider the social pressures that shape our expectations, and briefly mentions the value of reading with 'godly' friends.
I think there's a lot to be said for and about reading the Bible with friends.
One of the curious scenes in Augustine's Confessions involves Ambrose reading in silence; Augustine mentions that he'd never seen that before. You and I, of course, wouldn't think anything of it, but in the 4th century, silent reading was a big deal. Books were ordinarily read aloud, often by servants.
I think listening to somebody else read a book can help preserve the 'otherness' of a text.
"And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?" Can't "they" just read it for themselves? Apparently, not.
For those of us firmly in the digital age, I think small, online Bible-study groups can play a similar role in simulating the preaching-hearing experience Paul describes above in passage from Romans 10.
It's not just that reading with other people increases our chances of discovering a new idea; I really think it alters our overall experience of texts, preserving their 'otherness', readying them to be encountered -- to be 'heard'.
You make a great point. Sometimes I read the Scriptures of the day Sunday morning, and it's helpful to me. But something different happens when I hear them announced at my parish.
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