Mullins’s Introduction of a New Literary Perspective

I love instruction manuals. Legos were one of my favorite pastimes as a kid, and each set would come with its very own booklet of directions. I loved following the steps exactly as they were laid out to get the result the set advertised. However, in Matthew Mullins’s Enjoying the Bible, he claims that the Bible should not serve as an instruction manual and that we should simultaneously love it. In my mind, these two concepts sharply contradict each other, especially because I had viewed the Bible as an instruction manual before as well. Additionally, Mullins claims that the Bible should be experienced emotionally and intellectually, an idea I find intriguing. He insists that if I read the Bible this way, I will comprehend its message holistically compared to only reading it instructionally. In sum, Mullins’s view is that the Bible’s audience should rethink the common misconception that the Bible serves only to inform. I have mixed feelings about Mullins’s argument. In my view, he has underestimated the perspective held by society today regarding an emotional reading lens. However, I can support his explanation of how we should interpret literature. By looking at the similarities between his views and the virtues of justice, patience, humility, and charity, I am also able to credit his claims and comprehend their significance further. I believe that correcting my perspective, rethinking meaning, and trusting the author will help me interpret the Bible best because of Mullins’s parallelism with the four virtues.

One of Mullins’s main ideas is that readers should shift their perspective of certain literature, specifically poetry and the Bible. This concept helps me read these passages with justice instead of bias. For example, Mullins discusses a quote from Matthew Zapruder. Zapruder insists that “maybe poems are not to be read for their great answers, but for their great, more often than not unanswerable, questions” (qtd. in Mullins, 40). Readers of all genres of literature often look for meaning and answers in the text. However, Mullins presents the idea that the perspective of embracing confusion and questioning can help readers get an even more profound understanding of the literature. This perspective requires readers to eliminate their knee-jerk reaction of looking for the exact meaning of a text, therefore involving the virtue of justice. In my view, questioning literature is similar to conversing with literature. Rather than acting as a sponge, readers can filter information through their minds, causing deeper thinking and ultimately better comprehension. All things considered, Mullins helps form a better perspective of reading literature by incorporating justice.

I also found Mullins’s concept of rethinking meaning to be beneficial to my interpretations of literature. For instance, Mullins observes that “struggle is natural to literary texts, which encourage us to reflect and mediate rather than to cut to the chase” (41). Instead of viewing meaning as a quick and easy summary, Mullins might be arguing that the struggle should not only be a part of finding the meaning but also part of the meaning itself. This coincides with the virtue of patience. I find that exploring meaning already requires a lot of patience. On top of this, Mullins asks me to change my understanding of what meaning conceptually is. This next level of commitment to shifting my understanding of a common viewpoint is a tall order by Mullins. However, I believe this patience provides satisfying results. Not only will I be able to experience a new kind of emotional understanding, but I will also become increasingly familiar with the text itself as I spend more time with it. Ultimately, Mullins helps provide an avenue to rethink what meaning is through harnessing patience.

Additionally, Mullins introduces the idea that readers should embrace the knowledge that they do not know everything. Mullins helps illustrate this by introducing an example from a Psalmist. He argues that “Psalm 119:105… is trying to stir up a longing for God’s Word in you. That’s part of why the psalmist chose this poetic form rather than just telling you to turn to God’s Word” (15). Here, Mullins reveals that authors are always intentional with the form or genre in which they write. Therefore, the correct methods of interpretation should be utilized depending on which genre the author selects. In turn, Mullins may be insisting that the reader must embrace humility. Instead of the reader assuming the author is incorrectly displaying information through a certain genre, such as poetry, Mullins argues that readers should trust the author's choices. During my English class, I experienced a similar feeling that Mullins wards against. In my class’s analysis of the poem “Ascension” by Denise Levertov, I became frustrated with its strange vocabulary and inconsistent form. I found myself coming to the conclusion that the author could have just as easily presented their ideas in a simpler genre, and I therefore adopted a negative mindset toward the piece. However, as I continued to decipher the poem’s meaning, I found that there were concepts in the poem that written prose could not have expressed. Although we as readers are unable to truly know an author’s original intent, using humility can allow us to get closer to an understanding. Overall, Mullins helped me realize that humility is vital to trusting the author and comprehending their work in the most accurate way possible. Earlier I mentioned my misconception of Mullins’s idea that the Bible should not be an instruction manual. I strongly disagreed with this claim due to my past love of Lego instruction manuals. Upon reading further, Mullins clarifies this idea and states that “our goal here is not to dismiss the Bible’s power to instruct, but to broaden our understanding of what instruction means” (32). If I had read with charity and assumed that Mullins had good intentions with his anti-instruction manual claim, I would have been able to bypass my frustration sooner and experience his work with a more open mind. Mullins implicitly presents the importance of charity in another passage later in his book as well. He explains how “meaning is complex, and so it is like a spectrum, but the spectrum is limited, not boundless” (62). Here, Mullins illustrates an example of how readers should treat the author with charity. The audience of any literature is confined within the author’s words, which means that to practice charity toward the author, readers must make interpretations that are within the author’s chosen spectrum. If not, I conclude that the author and reader are disconnected, and the generated interpretations lack credibility. Charity is implicitly evident, then, in Mullins’s discussions of how we should interpret literature within a spectrum.

Mullins’s book Enjoying the Bible incorporates the use of many virtues, but more specifically, he both implicitly and explicitly highlights the crucial concepts of justice, patience, humility, and charity. Through my compared experience of reading literature before and after I read Mullins’s book, I now see how my previous one-way view of the Bible and other literary forms was insufficient. Mullins helps guide me to better interpretations of literature by illustrating the importance of correcting my perspective, rethinking the definition of meaning, and trusting the author. If I shift my perspective with these interpretive and literary tools, it will help me shift my perspective when reading other works as well. More importantly, it will enhance my reading of the Bible. Other Christians and I will be able to experience the Bible on a deeper level with this lens, which is vital because it is the book we base our lives around. In turn, we can truly comprehend the Bible’s message and ultimately become a group of people who follow God’s will better through Mullins’s holistic methods.

Work Cited

Mullins, Matthew. Enjoying the Bible: Literary Approaches to Loving the Scriptures. Baker

Academic, a Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2021