“I think the answer lies in the fact that we Catholics go to Mass. The Holy Mass has at least two Bible readings every time. If you pray the Breviary or Liturgy of Hours, multiply that several times.
Joe Catholic says to himself, “Why should I study the Bible? I go to Mass. I hear it there. Check and check.””
It’s because Catholics have such a shallow idea of what actual Biblical study looks like that they say these silly things. Just hearing some of the superficial ways scripture is used in a Papist mass doesn’t help you at all, and then they’re even disjointed too, taken out of context, and interpreted for you.
You have to actually read the text for yourself, in context. You have to take notes, look up commentaries, often times some disagreeing, examine the language. My degree is in English, and I don’t even do anything less when examining prose or poetry for its intended meanings. This is simply the basic way you approach any text. To understand something, you must read it for yourself, or say it to yourself, reading over the entire book to understand the author, his motivation, his meaning.
You can’t just read a section out of John chapter 5, or Romans 6, and Titus 1, and think that you know anything about any of those books.
More than that, I find a predominance of Christians that have never read from 'In the beginning' to 'Amen'. I defy anyone who thinks that they can understand what it says without reading it as a body of work - As one would read a novel - Thus the 'line upon line, precept upon precept' curse. The very first interpretation HAS to be what it says, on it's face, en toto. THEN, having seen the grand scheme, understanding the sweeping general themes and symbols, one can start to peel it like an onion, 'rightly dividing'.
I reject the outline laid out in the OP for that reason - jumping hither and yon is possible, but only after having read it straight through, and that, multiple times. Even now, when the Spirit moves me into a new (for me) revelation, it is more often that I have to re-read the whole work in that context - very seldom can one find such things in interspersed and varied verses.
Even in small amounts, it is better than not knowing at all.
This is true, but this article is about STARTing to begin reading your bible.
It does no good to complain that folks do not solve calculus problems when they've not yet become proficient with multiplication tables.