It's not a human document...

Agriculture is a helpful metaphor for things Christian.

You have to do things now that pay off in time.

Just as you plow a field and plant a crop in faith and hope that it will result in a harvest in another season, you have to do the same thing with the Word of God.

You read the Word of God complete and humbly. Not like a 'scholar'. Just read it. Read it as if it were above you (which it is). Read it as if your current level of understanding is not at its level.

Approach the Word of god the way a farmer approaches nature. With respect. With awe. With acknowledgment of its mystery and power. With understanding that he needs it more than it needs him.

Plant the Word of God in you like seed, and then it will grow. And it will manifest in time in new understanding that you can't predict or know about until you just have it.

But this all requires a very different approach to the Word of God than the scholar's approach, or the student's approach (the student who is looking to get some kind of grade or degree), or the approach of any kind of affectation of intellectualism, as if you're engaging a human document and not the very Word of the Living God.

Imagine a non-sailor thinking he can understand the ocean merely by an intellectual approach (or a person who thinks he can plant and grow a crop as if he were solving a mathematical problem.

I don't end this by conceding the obvious, that understanding is possible with the Word of God. I won't do that because it only gives the vain justification for forgetting everything written above. The fact is: understanding develops by degree, and the Word of God gives more than the scholar can even imagine. Of course an anti-intellectual approach is not what is called for, but these stumblingblocks should be obvious, and I won't waste any more time on them...

Just know that if when you hold the complete Word of God in your hands you don't have a sense of its mystery and living depth and power and the reality that it is ever new and potentially a source for ever new understanding (i.e., pilgrim, understanding above where you are currently at now) then you aren't approaching it in the way one has to.