The Book of Love and the Beauty of Boring
“The book of love is long and boring
And written very long ago
It’s full of flowers and heart-shaped boxes
And things we’re all too young to know
”
If you have never heard the song Book of Love by Stephen Merrit, I strongly suggest having a listen. The Peter Gabriel or Gavin James versions are my favorites. Stephen Merrit was not a Christian and was certainly not thinking of the bible when he wrote this. He was referring to marriage and it is a very beautiful description of the beauty, challenges, and mystery of marriage. But I share it because I started realizing that every time I heard it lately I thought of God’s life-altering letter to humanity.
As a Christian, I have heard countless suggestions on how to read the bible. A chapter a day, just meditate on a verse or two, follow a plan to read it in a year, don’t read too much at a time, read huge chunks at a time, read it with a devotional, don’t read it with a devotional. And on it goes. The wonderful thing is that there really are no hard and fast rules and, therefore, it is with fear and trepidation that I share how my changes in bible reading in the past year were, well, really great. On one hand, I don’t want to drop a legalistic burden on anyone but after 32 years of following Jesus and reading my bible regularly in a wide variety of ways, after this past year, I have come to a place of truly calling it the book of love. From beginning to end.
Sadly, I am not someone who takes advice well. Like many of you out there, I prefer to figure things out on my own and do it “my own way”. While there is some value in being an independent thinker, ultimately, there really is nothing new under the sun. As I heard a pastor say, “Life is too short to learn everything the hard way.” In other words, we need to have the humility to learn from others.
A couple of years ago God took me on a bit of a painful, but good, journey to expose the lack of humility in my life and this was the first place we landed: listen to the advice of people around you who love you and whom you respect. Chiefly, my husband.
After 20 plus years of marriage, it was quite shocking for me to realize how many little bits of wisdom he was dropping along the way that I was dismissing with a flick of my hand (like an actual hand flicking in the air). Things like, “you don’t need to cook every day,” or “ask for help,” or “spend more time writing.” But, most importantly, was how he read his bible. As long as I’ve known him he has been steady and, in my mind, boring in his approach. He just read it. He would start at Genesis and read big chunks every day until he got to Revelation and then started over. He would often suggest that I try his approach but, as mentioned, I dismissed it and continued to flit here and there in the bible. Here a verse, there a verse. Here a chapter, there a chapter.
It was a few months into my experiment of looking for ways to intentionally follow good advice that I actually heard my husband’s gentle prompting. It just so happens that it was also early covid days and I was open to trying things like sourdough and deep cleaning my house. It was almost exactly a year ago that we were in quarantine and I was a bit agitated and irritable and had been noticing that my husband was on his phone more than usual (unlike me who is never on her phone more than usual. Sigh.) “What are you doing on your phone?” I said with a slightly challenging tone. Blech.
“I’m reading my bible. I’m going to see if I can read it through twice this year.”
Oh. Right. It was at that moment I felt another prick from the Holy Spirit reminding me to slow down and learn from others. What if, after 22 years of being gently encouraged to read my bible right through in big chunks, I actually did it? So at that moment, almost exactly a year ago, I made the boring decision to read through the Bible in a year. But what started as a sheer exercise in discipline began to change me in ways that are far from boring.
The first thing I will tell you is that for the first 6 months it was just that: sheer discipline. While there was the odd verse or passage that made me stop and “feel something”, in general, I felt as though I was just plodding along. But by October or November, I started to notice a deep peaceful settling come over my mind. With ideologies and conspiracies and covid numbers and disturbing news stories and upcoming elections, instead of feeling tossed about, I felt steady. I noticed that, more and more, I had a solid framework and worldview to gauge what was going on.
Before reading my bible in this way, I realized that I had been picking up my bible each morning for a quick fix; a feel-good section that would get me going for the day. While I maintain that any reading of God’s word is far better than nothing as it is “living and active”(Hebrews 4:12) and “does not return void” (Isaiah 55:11), reading this way was not producing the kind of fruit that I believe is intended.
I realized that I had not been viewing God’s word as food. When we want to be healthy in our physical bodies, we do not eat a bite of kale and expect instant, amazing results while spending the rest of the day eating junk food. No, our physical bodies need us to eat primarily healthy food for weeks or months before seeing good results. Jesus declared Himself to be the Bread of Life and, therefore, we as His followers are called to feed on His word trusting that it will do the work whether we are “feeling it” at the moment or not.
As I mentioned earlier, the most beautiful byproduct of reading my bible twice a year (yes, I ramped up my pace around November and I might just barely make it), is that I can confidently call it the Book of Love. Prior to this experiment, I had somehow developed a fear of the Old Testament. While I had read large portions of it over the years, I think I fell prey to the critics of the Old Testament who claim that it is all blood and guts and a wrathful God. Guess what? As I read big swaths and could put all the blood and guts in context, I didn’t see a wrathful God but an awesome, powerful Creator of the universe who has set His love on the prize of His creation. His pleading and calling of His people to live a life apart from the suffering caused by sin are stunning and mind-blowing.
Did I understand all of it? Absolutely not. That will take more than a lifetime and help from pastors and friends and gifted theologians. “It’s full of flowers and heart-shaped boxes and things we’re all too young to know.”
Was it sometimes boring? Yes, some passages were hard for me to stay focused through and, between you and me, the second time through I just may have done some skimming through all the furnishings of the tabernacle. “The book of love is long and boring. And written very long ago.” But I’m also coming to a new appreciation of boring and was recently encouraged by an article by Russell Moore entitled Three Kinds of Boring in which he differentiates between the kind of bored that leads us to be distracted by YouTube and Netflix, producing very little helpful fruit in our lives, and the kind of bored that pushes you to develop beneficial and life-giving habits. The kinds of disciplines that will lead to real long-term change and motivate you to better love the people in your life. Russell Moore:
The right kind of “boring” is the refusal to “tickle ears,” as the Apostle Paul put it, with whatever the mob demands at the moment. The right kind of “boring” is the maturity of such things as integrity to what one believes to be true, fidelity to one’s vows—whether in marriage or in ordination or in commitment to one’s God.
You could have an “exciting” obituary one day if you are a serial killer gunned down by the mafia at an orgy, much less “boring” than if you love your God, stay faithful to your family, serve your neighbors with your gifts, and callings, and don’t expect anyone but God to remember you for very long (which is what will happen anyway, after all, in the long run). Isn’t the boring life the one you would choose? So choose it now.
Jesus is “boring” to some people in the Gospels—because he doesn’t excite them with the signs they demand or by entering the controversies they set forth. But he is never boring in the real sense. No one who really knows who Jesus is about, or what he is like, “sorta-likes” him. Instead, we find a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense there, and on the other side of that, we find life or death. (1 Pet. 2:8).
As I alluded to, I was afraid to write this article for several reasons. I was worried that I would sound like a religious bragger. Or that someone would feel shame or guilt for not reading their bible in this way. But I forged ahead because I realized a few other things. One, sometimes we are far too concerned with making everyone feel good that we are afraid “to stir up one another to love and good works” (Hebrews 10:24). Those in Christ know that there is nothing we can do in our own efforts to make us more acceptable to God but if we can encourage one another to have more of His goodness and bring Him glory, we need to do that. Finally, the day is going to come when I am going to need some of you to lovingly kick me in the butt to “run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1b) and to “not get weary in well-doing”(Galatians 6:9). And I hope you will do it. But for now, I encourage you to read the book of love. As much as you can.
