WHAT IS THE BEST BIBLE-READING PLAN?
Plenty of Bible-reading plans exist, with the “read the Bible through in a year” programs being on the top of the list
What is wrong with one-year Bible-reading systems?
The problem with reading this way is that all such programs miss the point. While reading through the Bible in a year is a worthy endeavor, it is an artificial one. God is not interested in our making it through all 66 books in 365.25 days. What He desires of us is that we understand what we read in His word, ruminate on it, and then do something with what we have read.
With some of the plans out there, a person could spend an entire year reading the Bible and not remember one whit of it, nor put into practice even one of its commands.
Sadly, that seems to be what a lot of Christians do. You don’t believe me? Just take a look at the state of the world, and especially the biblical ignorance rampant in the Church all over the world.
Beyond all the planning behind them, most Bible-reading plans suffer from an imposed superficiality and disjointedness. The disjointedness will eventually drive any sincere seeker off the one-year plan. Many plans include an Old Testament reading, a Psalm, a Gospel, and an Epistle all in one day! The next day, the plan moves up a chapter in each. Is it any wonder that the unity of the Scriptures begins to fall apart when read that way? Yes, doing it that way a person will be reading the Bible! But he will not understand the point of each book nor will he be able to put it all together into a whole that transforms his life.
The main issue here has to do with the artificial chapter and verse system we have imposed on God’s word. It may come as a shock to some people, but the chapter system we are so familiar with did not exist until eleven centuries after the New Testament was given. The verse system came three hundred years after that. In other words, when the greatest saints of the Church read the Scriptures, they thought of them solely as uniform books or letters. Today, we think of them more as chapters and verses. Most reading plans slavishly obey chapter delineation for no good reason other than convenience. But God never intended His word to be “convenient.”
–Beth Johnson