Familiarity With The Bible

If someone reads the Bible thoroughly and completely, there will by necessity come a point where there is no explicitly new content for them to discover.  There may be some specific passages that fade from memory, but there is such a thing as having nothing more from the Bible to incorporate into one's worldview, although reaching this point is not a quick endeavor.  Unsurprisingly, conveying this fact is often interpreted as showing a disregard for the Bible.  On the contrary, this position alone rightly regards all of the Bible's crucial messages as being understandable and applicable.

Is there a need to scrutinize the Bible after one has become aware of each of its major doctrines (and by this I mean its actual doctrines, not the misrepresentations that evangelical and liberal theologians conjure up)?  There is not.  Ironically, Christians who think they are obligated to continually probe the Bible even after reaching this aforementioned awareness have not realized that the Bible does not demand that a person fixate on reading it after absorbing its content.  Those who think otherwise are like those who mistakenly hold that attending church on Sundays is a mark of spiritual excellence: they confuse traditions for actual authority.  The Bible does not prescribe either.

Evangelicals are prone to devise extra-Biblical spiritual/moral goals, pursue them, and characterize people who do not join them as being spiritually apathetic.  The expectation that a person will continually scour the Bible well after mastering its contents is a prominent example of this legalism.  There are two negative effects that often come about from this, the first being a false sense of spiritual security in those who adhere and the second being a false sense of moral failing in those who do not.  In both cases, Christians are adversely impacted by an erroneous construct of tradition.

It is certainly vital for Christians to become very intimately familiar with the Bible, but it is not vital for them to constantly pore over it once intimate familiarity is achieved, as if its words will change from one reading to the next.  It is possible to understand every one of the Bible's central teachings and thus have no need to revisit the Bible on a frequent basis.  A person should read the Bible often when reaching the point of deep familiarity.  There is simply no need to do so after attaining that objective.  Fortunately, we are capable of massive spiritual growth: we can amass knowledge of Scripture that is far more extensive than many Christians like to admit.