How to Read the Bible Without Losing Your Mind

A Practical Guide for People Who Want to Re-engage Scripture Without the Anxiety

One of the most common things I hear from people in this space (people who have walked away from or are walking away from the faith traditions they grew up in) is that the Bible feels like a minefield now. They either avoid it completely because it’s too loaded, or they pick it up and immediately feel the old anxiety creeping back in. Or the guilt. Or the pressure to have the right interpretation. Or the fear that asking the wrong question means something is wrong with them.

I’ve been there. And I think a lot of you have too.

So I made something!

The How to Read the Bible Without Losing Your Mind Guide is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a short, practical, accessible guide to approaching Scripture in a way that is intellectually honest, spiritually alive, and a lot less anxious than what most of us were taught. It’s a starting point for people who want to re-engage with Scripture without all the baggage that used to come with it.

It covers things like why knowing the genre of a biblical text changes everything, how to let Jesus function as the interpretive lens for the whole library, how to give yourself permission to read slowly and selectively without feeling like you’re failing, and what to actually do when you hit something in the text that disturbs or confuses you.

I wrote this for people who are reconstructing—who haven’t thrown the whole thing out, but who need a different set of tools than the ones they were handed. If that’s you, I think this will be genuinely useful.

The guide is linked below. I hope it’s helpful. And as always, I’d love to hear what you think. I am really proud of it.