Yesterday we talked about about reading the Bible. I suggested a couple answers for one question I hear: Why is the Bible so confusing?

Here’s another suggestion: Remember that you read poets and letters, genealogies and histories,  critics and SparkNotes  in very different ways.

Poems reveal deep feeling. Poems leave out details. Poems often make challenging metaphoric leaps. You read poems with passion, whether ecstatic or despairing. Letters may have the same passion but they are more prosaic. They offer information and direction. They root the relationship in time shared.

Genealogies are factual. Relationships reduced to simple lists. They are interesting only as they suggest what might exist in the gaps, creating a skeleton.  Histories, on the other hand, are the stories,the adventures, the parts you skipped to when bored with name lists.

Critics are anything but neutral. They take sides, make judgments, suggest implications. If this continues, they say, everything is going to fall apart. SparkNotes (or CliffsNotes) summarize. They are being efficient, telling the stories without most details.

We would never think of reading these kinds of writing the same way or for the same purpose. And the Bible is exactly the same way. The poems in the book of Psalms are very different from the letters at the back of the book. The genealogies in the beginning of Matthew, or in parts of Numbers, aren’t meant primarily to give room for sentence by sentence application to our lives. The stories, show us what other people following God have done, or not done. They serve as cautionary tales. The social critics, known to us as prophets, are as blunt as any contemporary AM radio talkshow host. The Gospels covering three years of life in few pages each, are pretty focused, pretty concentrated.

As you read, think about style.