How to Read People.
Read Books Better.
In 2017, I created a book club. We read one book: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. I love the Lord of the Rings movies, but I felt like I needed to experience the original vision of the author. I read the first chapter or two, and I was less than en- thused. So, I started thinking about how I might get more out of it and challenged my- self to do the following: read Tolkien’s masterpiece as if it were the Bible.
Currently, I read the Bible in a variety of ways. I like to understand the context and figure out what particular passages meant to original audiences. I also like to figure out how certain passages evolve and apply to the post-modern era, and how others have remained clear and true throughout history. Occasionally, I read certain sections as poetry (because there are poems in the Bible) and other times, I read certain sections as instructions (because there are instructions in the Bible). Some passages I read because I like adventure, and other passages I read in efforts to find a better way of living.
But primarily, I read each morsel of Scripture as if God were trying to convey something to me as an individual and to humanity as a collective. I read the Bible with an awareness and a set of lenses that I don’t bring with me to anything else.
With this in mind, I put on my scripture-reading glasses to read Fellowship, and the book came alive. The ideas and concerns and beauty and characters came off the page in a way that they otherwise would not have done. Yes, I started reading as if Tolkien were trying to convey and communicate something to me, but I also began reading as if God were trying to speak through Frodo and Sam, Aragorn and Gal- adriel. It changed everything.
Instead of two characters simply conversing to further the plot, their phrases took on new meaning. In chapter three, Gildor says to Frodo, “The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.” But Gildor wasn’t just talking to Frodo. Gildor and Tolkien and God were speaking to me concerning the dangers of isolation and echo chambers and the like. This new method truly enhanced every aspect of the reading experience.
So I finished the book…and never consciously read another that way again.
Read People Better.
Pastor and teacher Eugene Peterson is famous for translating The Message, a modern-language paraphrase of the Bible. I’ve used it for years and highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for a new way to access Scripture.
Peterson has also written numerous other books on Scripture, life, and pastoring. In Under the Unpredictable Plant, Peterson documents his theology and understand- ing of what it means to be a pastor. In one passage, he tells a story of how James Joyce’s Ulysses helped him become the pastor he always wanted to be. Early in his ministry, his responsibilities of preaching and teaching took up a great deal of his time, and the pastoral care duties were simply about being present and showing up, nothing more. Then he picked up Ulysses, a story about all the ordinary details in the life of an ordinary man. And it changed everything. Peterson says, “Joyce woke me up to the infinity of meaning within the limitations of the ordinary person in the ordinary day” (125).
All of a sudden, Peterson says, “I wanted to be able to look at each person in my parish with the same imagination and insight and comprehensiveness with which Joyce looked at his character…I determined to be as exegetically serious when listening to so-and-so in koine American as I was when reading St. Matthew in koine Greek. I wanted to see the Jesus story in each person in my congregation with as much local detail and raw experience” (125–6).
I used my Bible reading lens to read a “regular” book, and it changed the way I read. Peterson used a similar lens to read the human beings around him, and it changed the way he pastored. Instead of treating a hospital visit as a simple duty of pastoral responsibility, Peterson went to the bedside, “with the same diligence and curiosity that I bring to a page of Isaiah’s oracles” (127).
Read People Like Scripture.
In Mark 16:6–7, the disciples receive a message: “Jesus is risen…he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you.” This tiny passage took hold of Peterson in the midst of this major pastoral realization and changed his vocation forever. Afterward, Peterson writes, “In every visit, every meeting I attend, every appointment I keep, I have been anticipated. The risen Christ got there ahead of me. The risen Christ is in that room already. What is he doing? What is he saying? What is going on?” (127).
To really commit this to heart, Peterson quickly took to quoting the same words from Mark while inserting the address or location in place of Galilee. For example: “He is risen, and he is going ahead of you to Emory Hospital; there you will see him, as he told you,” or “He is risen, and he is going ahead of you to hospice care; there you will see him, as he told you.”
Peterson continues, “I am alert and observant for what the risen Christ has been doing or saying that is making a gospel story out of his life. The theological category for this is prevenience, the priority of grace. We are always coming in on something that is already going on” (128).
In the 1700s, John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, brought the idea of prevenience, or prevenient grace, to the forefront. Wesley similarly articulated that God’s grace is already at work in us and around the world before we know it. Indeed, God goes before us.
Read People Through Resurrection.
What lens are you using when you read books, watch movies, or take walks? Better yet, what lens are you using when you interact with people? Are you simply being present? Or are you actively searching for the ways God has already been at work? Are you paying attention to a conversation with the person across the table? Or are you listening for a word from God?
Know this: He is risen. And he is going ahead of you, wherever you are going. There you will see him, as he told you. Will you look for him?
