How Bible Reading Habits Have Changed Throughout History

The article takes a long-term perspective that is helpful. It also challenges the idea that a daily quiet time (as typically understood) is truly a Biblical mandate. And it looks for alternatives to get into God’s Word.

What is missing here, however, is the idea that Christians not only mull over a verse or two (good habit), but that believers are FLUENT in the Scriptures. This only comes through listening to the Bible being read or reading it, ideally repeatedly over the years.

The article is more about sustenacne than trhiving, IMO.

One thing that might really help is if leaders—and as a deacon, I implicate myself in that category—really communicated the joy of the Scriptures to the rest of the church. Sometimes it seems as if a lot of people are more interested in propagating the system from their own Bible college to the future instead of being transformed by God’s Word, and the end result is a lifeless form of Christianity.

In contrast, I read large portions of The Canterbury Tales (in the original Middle English no less) a couple of years back, and what struck me was the degree of Biblical knowledge Chaucer imputed to his characters. Yes, to be sure, it’s fiction, but sometimes fiction is more realistic than non-fiction because the author knows that fiction, apart from science fiction and romance novels and such, must be believeable. And so it’s striking that the “Housewife of Bath”, having only a rudimentary knowledge of Scripture from Mass and the “Bildung”/picturing done at the cathedrals, seems to have a more mature Biblical knowledge of marriage (and other things) than priests did at the time.

We might joke that a lot of our Christian books are akin to talking to the girl’s friends instead of talking to the girl herself. Talk to the girl, get excited about her! (so to speak)