I've been raised on the Bible my whole life. Raised in a Christian home, my dad was (still is) a Preacher. I grew up in a Church of Christ environment, not that that is anything important but it may give you an idea on my upbringing and traditions I'm used to and things I grew up being told. Whether or not all the things I've come to believe, the traditions I observe, and many more nuances, are right/wrong, good/bad, what you believe or not, that's not what I'm here to talk about.
I said I was raised on the Bible. I was taught it in Sunday school, a 30-45 minute class period while the adults got preached to in the main auditorium. I sang songs and prayed about as much as anyone in that upbringing (though I'll be honest and say that much of what I did while young was play under the pew and doodle and even nap). The Bible, at least the typical parts of it, were read to me, illustrated to me on felt board, described, explained in little songs that were kinda clever but more demeaning and boring than anything else. The Holy Spirit was talked about, just not very much, I do believe maybe we neglected it and it's great importance, but we didn't forget it.
Though I've never really had much of the Bible memorized, I do know the gist of most of the common things that were read to us and what I eventually read here and there. I didn't really fully read my Bible until college, meaning I didn't start reading from the beginning and continue on till the last book, and even in college I skipped through a few things, skimmed some of the longer prophets and psalms just to keep up with everything else I was trying to do. But that Freshman year I read more of the Bible than I had in my whole life up to that point. I'm sure for many people this is a very similar picture of what they experienced.
Understand that it wasn't that the Bible didn't interest me. It was chalk full of things that amazed me and made me smile, made me shake my head, made me scratch me head, and honestly nearly made me want to throw up (for many different reasons, all of them constantly changing as I matured in life and spirit). It was more that it was just long, and hard to read, complicated and sometimes yes, at least to me, incomprehensible. This was probably due to the translation and my very small brain and limited knowledge and sorely lacking education (I had good teachers, I went to decent schools, but let's just be honest and say that education isn't what it should be and I should be smarter, but not for a lack of trying on my educators part).
Having finally read about 80% of the Bible then in college I was opened up to a lot of things I just hadn't heard talked about before. Not inconsistencies, not hypocrisies or anything like that that many people seem to tout when they read the Bible with the closed mind of a person only trying to tear down what they don't even begin to want to understand. I was just opened up to new stories, new parts of stories I just hadn't heard before, completely new things that I don't think were ever really talked about or glossed over. It was refreshing. I learned more about God, about Jesus, about what being a Christian really is and means. My college life was full of little lights going on like that. A refreshing drink of the Holy Spirit here and there, and it started with reading Scripture.
It's several years later since that first little light and now here I am again and I'm reading the Bible not from beginning to end completely, just kind of hopping around. But now I'm reading this new translation The Voice. I'm not going to say this translation is better than any other, I think reading multiple translations is a good thing to get a new refreshed look at something that maybe you've become very used to. The Voice for me though has done more than just give me a refreshed look at Scripture. This translation is very excellent in my opinion, they restructure things a bit and add some clarifying text (letting you know of course that it is not scripture just their add on) as well as extra little notes and text, it's just great. I find myself reading it as if I've never read it before and that in and of itself is beautiful and great, but there's more.
I'm a pretty stubborn person, I taught myself a long time ago that crying was a weakness due to begin picked on and pushed around for being...well...just kinda nerdy and different from the standard they wanted me to meet. Among other things I thought about myself through those formative years, that's probably one of the most destructive. I don't cry very much, maybe a handful of times in the past dozen or more years over things that were just so emotional I couldn't hold them back no matter how hard I tried. That being said, reading this new translation is really pushing that wall. I've never really cried while reading the Bible, but now I'm getting close.
I'm reading things and it feels like the first time and as I read I feel tears fighting to fall, I feel like I want to curl into a ball and cry. Not because I'm so convicted about Jesus, already good there. Not because it's necessarily beautiful, it is no question there. But because as I read it I feel so completely like a failure but so uplifted at the same time. Mostly I've been reading Paul's letters at the moment and he speaks so eloquently and in this version I understand it even better (let's face it, Paul was like a physicist talking to a farmer most of the time), and as I read I'm cut, as the people that Peter preached to on Pentecost. My heart is cut because Paul speaks the truth and all I can think is, "Paul...I'm nothing like that. I don't love people very well, I hate them so easily. I'm not slow to my anger, I'm quicker than a viper to want to sink my fangs into someone that I'm merely annoyed with. You speak of wisdom, but I'm so foolish and prideful! How can you say these things about being a Christian, a believer in Christ our Savior and Redeemer, Our Judge and Jury and Ultimate Defense against the outer darkness, and yet here I sit reading and believing I'm a Christian but struggling so much to do those things, to be a reflection of Christ. Paul, I'm a failure."
But even as I feel that I feel uplifted because he never stops there. He speaks so eagerly of grace, so beautifully of mercy and Christ's forgiveness that's a free gift and as a free gift when you respond you follow the commands of the Lord, you jump at the chance. He preaches of no one doing it perfectly and always of people failing and faltering (otherwise he wouldn't have written the letters at all). I'm cut because I know I fail, I'm cut because I know I'm forgiven, and I'm cut because I want so very much to do what God wants, to please my Father in Heaven and do as he would have me do, but I get so lost and I forget.
I want to cry as I read the Bible, and I believe that's something that many of us have built up a stubborn resistance to. We think it's just a book, a gathering of letters, poetry, prophecy, history and it's meant for our education. It most certainly is, but it's so much more! It's supposed to cut us, to convict us, to move us. This book is supposed to make us cry! We should cry for the failure of our ancestors, we should cry for the failures of just a few minutes ago. We should weep in joy for the things God has done in the past and what He still does today. We should shed so many tears that all the world would drown in our worship and love of the Creator and in doing so wash away all the dirt and horror that covers it now.
In Ecclesiastes 3:4 it says "A time to cry, a time to laugh; a time to mourn, a time to dance;" I believe this is true of Scripture. There is a time when we read it we should weep, I think maybe that this is the time for me to weep as I read Scripture (or get close to it, old habits die hard).
