Hello and welcome back to the Scrupulosity series. Today we’re talking about reading the Bible differently for scrupulosity.

Hello and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Keri Bach. I’m a Christ follower, wife, and mother, and a licensed professional counselor who helps Christians struggling with OCD get to a deeper level of healing. When I couldn’t find resources for my clients with OCD, God called me to bring this podcast to you with practical tools for developing greater peace.

We’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing and helping you replace uncertainty with faith. I’m here to help you let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you. So let’s dive right into today’s episode.

I did an episode before, 141, on “Is OCD Keeping You from Reading the Bible?” If you want more information, you may want to go back and listen to that episode as well. Someone in our recent survey said that they had a fear of reading the Bible, and if you are listening to this, I want you to know that you are not alone because so many Christians with OCD deal with this exact same thing.

And maybe you’ve never heard that before because you might not have met someone else who has the same struggle. Now, this can happen for a variety of different reasons. Sometimes certain words can be a trigger, whether that’s the devil, the Holy Spirit, repentance—I could go on and on. I’m sure there are many different trigger words.

Sometimes certain Scripture passages can be very triggering, such as the “Lord, Lord” passage where Jesus said, “Depart from me. I never knew you.” You may feel this guilt and shame because you want to read the Bible, but reading it just seems too overwhelming or anxiety-producing. So then you end up avoiding it, and it just causes this whole shame cycle.

So what should you do if you’ve been avoiding reading the Bible because it’s become too triggering for your scrupulosity? The first thing I want to say is to start small. Take a few Scriptures, maybe from Episode 211 on embracing God’s love. We have those references in the show notes for you. You can write those Scriptures on an index card, start with one or two, and just read them really slowly.

Maybe even put your name in the Scripture verse somewhere. God does not want you to be terrified for you to read His love letter to you. This is a love letter. It’s a story about God’s love for us, about redemption, and God doesn’t want us to live in so much fear that we can’t even pick up the Bible and read what He has to say to us.

Thinking about my own child, if there’s something that I want her to know or that I want to communicate to her, I want her to be able to receive that information in love. Even if it’s hard, even if it’s a discipline conversation, I want her to still have the understanding and knowledge that I love her, and I don’t want her to be afraid to come to me about anything.

Maybe a small thing that you can do to enter back into Bible reading, if you’ve been avoiding it, is to read a children’s Bible. Yes, even if you’re all grown up. I told this story in my email list. My email subscribers typically hear things from me first, so if you want to get on our email list, just go to kerybach.com and scroll to the bottom of that homepage to sign up for the newsletter.

I had a thought. I was working with a client who was dealing with some intense scrupulosity, just a negative viewpoint of God—God being harsh, God not being loving, God out to get this individual. I was reading The Jesus Storybook Bible to my daughter, and I thought, this is a great Bible because it’s all about God’s love and redemptive story and how Jesus is on every page of the Bible, how it shows Jesus’ story of redemption through the Old Testament and then joins it into the New Testament.

It’s just a wonderful children’s Bible if you have kids or if you have scrupulosity. So I thought maybe I’ll mail this to my client that I was seeing virtually. And then my initial thought was, wow, that’s a really crazy idea. Like, you’re going to mail a grown man a children’s Bible? What is wrong with you? It’s not going to land. It’s not going to go well.

The next thing I knew, I had the thought again, like, oh, maybe I should give him this Bible. And I wrestled with that a little bit, but not as much. I thought, well, maybe that would be a good idea. Maybe this is something that could shift someone’s belief about God to be in a more positive, biblical headspace.

The third time I thought about it, I was praying and just really felt this tug internally from the Holy Spirit that I needed to do this. I mailed the Bible. I said, “Hey, I’m sending you a book that might be helpful to you. Just kind of be open to it, if you will.” It turned out really, really well. This individual was receptive to it, and it was just a great opportunity to read the Bible differently than this individual was used to reading it.

We have our own lenses a lot of times that we take and view the Bible through—our own experiences, past teachings that we’ve heard from other pastors or spiritual leaders, even things that you may have picked up online too. People are consuming so much content nowadays that they didn’t use to 50 or 100 years ago. We didn’t have access to the massive amount of information that we have right now.

In Mark 10:14, Jesus becomes indignant with the disciples and says, “Let the children come to me and do not hinder them, for such belong the kingdom of God. I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”

We want to be able to come to God with a sense of wonder, of curiosity, of not feeling like we have to have it all figured out. Do you ever notice that children aren’t afraid to ask questions? They’ll just ask you, “Why is this like this?” or “What is that thing over there?” Why? Because they want to know.

They have this sense of true wonder and trying to understand, but yet at the same time, there’s no pressure to have to know everything. And if we could just come to God like that, being open and being willing to read His Word and to hear what He has to say to us, I think we all could benefit from that.

I would encourage you to sit down in a place of quiet and really examine potential rigid beliefs that you might have about Bible reading. These are some examples that I came up with, but there probably are more.

One: I have to read a certain amount or in a certain way.
Two: I have to read at a certain time of day.

That could be a very rigid belief if you think, well, I have to read the Bible first thing in the morning. What happens if you have a really rough night of sleep and you aren’t able to read your Bible? You rush out the door and you’re just laden with all of this guilt and shame. I completely messed up my Bible reading for the day.

Well, no. There are still plenty of other hours in the day that you could read your Bible. You could put your Bible on in the car on the way to work. You could read your Bible on your lunch break. You could read your Bible before you go to bed. You don’t have to set up this rigid structure that sets you up for failure.

Another one that I thought of—I know I had fallen into this for many years—is, I have to get something out of it. Like I have to have some type of application step from reading the Bible.

Now that I’m farther along in my Christian walk, one thing I’ve realized about Bible reading is that, for me, it’s a way to connect with God. That connection piece is very important. And God may say something to me while I’m reading His Word, like, oh, I could be more loving to my spouse in this situation. Maybe I need to watch my tongue and make sure that my words are edifying to other people.

There are many different things that I might be able to apply from the Bible. But sometimes it’s just a matter of getting that Word in you. And the more that you put that Word in you, the more that it will come out of you in the best possible way. The Word of God is transformative. As we put that in, it changes us. As we interact with the Word, God brings Scripture to mind when we most need it, if we take that time to put it in there.

So it’s not always about this immediate three-step process of changing my life because I read these chapters of the Bible. Use it as a connection point, not as a very rigid “I have to do something after I read this.”

Maybe one of your rigid beliefs is about feeling like you’ve got to read it like a textbook and dissect it and understand everything and read all the commentaries. Maybe it’s looking at all the footnotes, trying to really grapple with it and make sure that you’re getting all the knowledge you possibly can. That is probably going to lead you to burnout if you do that all the time.

Now, there may be a time and a place. I am taking a very long time to go through an Isaiah Bible study that I have right now because it’s one of those deeper-dive type studies where you’re looking at parallel passages, a little bit of the meaning of words, and recognizing some repetition.

That’s the reason that it’s taking me a while to get through it. I will pick it up and then I’ll put it down and read something else for a little while. I’ll pick up Isaiah again, go through some of those Bible studies, and then put it back down. It helps to have a little bit of time away so that I can see more clearly when I come back to it.

I don’t think there’s a right or a wrong way to do that. If somebody decided they wanted to dive in and go straight through it, that’s fine. But I find, for me, it’s helpful to take a break from that and go read some of the Gospels or something in the New Testament, and then come back and do this deeper dive.

Who knows? I may be on and off in Isaiah for another year. I have no idea. It’s been really good for me, though, to have some time to dig in a little bit deeper without being rigid about it.

Another belief that you might need to let go of is that you have to understand everything. It’s the Holy Spirit who helps us interpret the Bible and understand what it means. But there are going to be times where you wrestle and you’re not really sure what something means, and we have to be okay with that.

We may come to understand it later. We may do some deeper research. We may just let it go and say, “God, this Scripture passage is really hard, and I don’t understand it.” We don’t have to immediately come to some type of resolution or understanding for everything that we read in the Bible.

We learn and grow. We hear different teachings. We pray about it, and the Holy Spirit reveals things to us. It’s a process. It’s not something that you have to feel like you have to rush through and know it all.

So let’s look at why we even read the Bible in the first place. If we have fear tied up around reading the Bible, why are we engaging in this practice?

Well, we’re spending time with God. Like I said, that’s His love letter to us. We’re trying to make a connection. It’s like when you spend time with your spouse or a close friend. All kinds of things can happen. Sometimes you feel really connected. You have deep conversations. You feel really loved.

Other times, you’re just sitting there like two blobs on the couch, each of you on your own phone. But even then, the showing up is important.

Sometimes in our relationship with God, we may feel like, okay, I’m here. I’m reading. I don’t even really know what’s happening with me. I don’t know if I’m necessarily understanding this or getting anything out of it. But the important part is that you’re showing up, that you’re putting in the spiritual reps to get to know God better. And there’s really no better way to do that than by opening up the Bible and studying it for yourself.

I would say don’t always rely on everyone else to teach you about the Bible. There comes a point in time where you may need to put some of the commentaries down or the Bible studies aside and literally just read the Word of God.

We read the Bible not just to spend time with God, but to get to know Him—His character. What does the Bible say about Him? What can I learn from the experiences of people in the Bible?

The Bible teaches us how to live and how to be in relationship with other people. That’s so important because some of us don’t know how to be in relationship with others. We don’t know how to have healthy conflict. We don’t know how to set a boundary. We don’t know how to truly love someone sacrificially.

We’re all in this process, trying to figure it out in community. Hopefully you’re in some type of Christian community or church where other people can come alongside you and where you can support each other on this journey. I believe that’s an important piece of the puzzle as well.

It’s not just about you having an individual relationship with God. It’s about walking with God in community. That is very biblical.

Second Timothy 3:16–17 states, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

 Timothy three, 16 and 17 states, all scripture is breathed out by God. Well love that part. Breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reprove, for correction.

For training in righteousness. What? That the man of God may be complete equipped for every good work. So we are receiving the words of God for teaching correction so that we can be righteous, we can be equipped for everything that God has called us to do. It’s gonna be really hard to be equipped for all that God has called you to do if you’re not spending time with him and if you’re not getting to know him.

Now, let’s say that you’re not avoiding reading the Bible. Maybe you’re not afraid like this person who is taking the survey, but maybe you feel like, you know what? I do have some of these rigid beliefs about reading the Bible. Carrie, and I am in an OCD rut. I feel like I’ve gotta do it a certain way. It feels super uncomfortable if I don’t follow this exact pattern of reading the Bible that I have.

This is where I, I’m gonna encourage you to be a little uncomfortable and switch it up a tad. Okay, so I’m back on episode 1 54. We had Jennifer Tucker on to talk with us about Lectio Divina, which is a specific way of reading. Scripture is very, uh, slow meditative. You know, you read through the scripture passage different times.

She also has a great book on prayers. We have another podcast episode on that hearts out to Jennifer Tucker. We love her. But you may want to listen to the Bible or read it out loud just to give you a different perspective or a different way of reading the Bible. I listened to a Bible in a year podcast for a little period, and the people had really great your English accent, so that was fun as well.

But you may find something like that where people are reading through the Bible, maybe reading a different version of the Bible than you’re used to. Sometimes it can be helpful to compare versions. Especially when we get tripped up on certain words, because different translations may have different word meanings that come out, and if you’re really stuck on, oh wow, I’m not really sure what that exactly is saying.

Sometimes reading it in a different translation can help you. There are word for word translations and there are phrase translations. You can look all of that good stuff up on the internet. Now, there is a soap way of reading the Bible. I found this interesting because as a therapist you’re taught there is a soap way to write notes.

SOAP is an acronym. Okay? It stands for Scripture Observation, application, and Prayer. Scripture can prompt us to pray for specific things for ourself, for others, so the SOAP method is another avenue for you. If you want read through the Bible in chronological order, there are chronological Bibles. Steve and I did that in 2024 with our church.

It was a very interesting experience and definitely brought out some things that we hadn’t necessarily seen before or thought of like. Oh, oftentimes we don’t think of, job, for example, was actually a very early book in the Bible, even though it’s in the middle, kind of in the wisdom literature section.

They also did a great job kind of incorporating the Psalms with different historical events that were happening in the Old Testament. So. There’s little different pieces that you can pick up from reading the Bible differently, and so you may have to shake things up a little bit to work through that rut or feeling like, I’ve gotta do it this way.

And these are all healthy ways of reading the Bible. We’re not telling you to do something really strange or crazy, just trying to help you have a different perspective so that you can connect with God maybe in a different way that you haven’t before. Do you have other thoughts or questions on reading the Bible?

And you have Scrupulosity love to hear from you. You can reach me at cherry bach com. We have a main contact form and I would love to hear from you later in this series. We’re gonna do a question and answer episode for different topics or questions that came up from our listeners. Some survey comments that we got, so we would love to hear your questions and hopefully be able to answer some of those to the best of our ability.

Alright, thanks so much for listening. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Christian faith in OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.