Bible Streaks Considered Harmful

Extending your streak one more day won’t make Jesus love you any more. Consistent, faithful, daily Bible reading can be a great thing: it feeds your faith, fixes your mind on God, restores your soul, and trains you in righteousness. The danger arises when reading the Bible morphs into maintaining your streak. Streaks and dated reading plans apply that pressure in different ways. A streak gives you a number to preserve. A dated reading plan gives you a backlog to maintain. Both make the calendar part of the accounting, but the one second is where I get myself into trouble. I don’t personally feel much need to maintain a streak of Bible reading1. My problem comes after I’ve already missed a day or two: now I’m behind. Thursday’s missed reading becomes unpaid debt. Skipping four days because of a work conference means now I owe the Bible four readings. I don’t like being behind. I don’t like being in debt. I don’t like feeling guilty. So I try to cram a week’s worth of reading into a…