Reading and Living the Bible Well

Our Course on Seminary Now

A 9-part video course introducing a new paradigm for engaging Scripture, produced in partnership with Seminary Now

Watch it for free with a 7-day trial

In this course, our Senior Director of Content Glenn Paauw explains how the Bible has become divorced from its literary and historical context, leading to misinterpretation and a “narrow, individualistic and escapist view of salvation.” Rather than being a culture-shaping force, the Bible has become a database of quick and easy answers to life’s troubling questions. But these deficiencies can be corrected by engaging in what the author calls “big readings.”

Paauw introduces us to seven understandings of the Bible as steps to recovering one deeply engaged Bible. With each “new” Bible presented, deficiencies in how we currently interact with the Bible are explored, followed by recommendations for a new practice. The Bible’s transformative power is recovered when we remove the chains Christians have applied to it over the centuries.

The Bible does not need to be saved because of any defect in itself, but because we have distorted and misread it. This course provides of the Bible a new paradigm for reading and living the Bible well.

“Do we see our own lives as extensions of the story of the Bible?
Do we realize that the Bible is a story of restoration of our lives, of this earth, of the whole creation?
God is about making things new.”