Finding Jesus in the Bible…So We Can Follow Him in Life
Bible Reading Plans
- Plan One: New Testament Only
- Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
- Plan Three: New Testament + History
- Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3
Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.
Extras
Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute
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Transition
I haven’t struggled to find a solution to the problem I described yesterday. It’s obvious. Once I ran the numbers and thought things through, it became crystal clear to me what I needed to do.
Ever since Rudolf Flesch (1911–1986) wrote his classic books on readable writing in the mid-20th century, there has been no mystery about what improves non-fiction writing. I read Flesch in the early 1980s, but over the decades have wandered away from the principles of plain English that he practiced and taught.
These days, even AI will readily present the all the advice – including but not limited to Flesch’s – that is needed to help any writer be better understood. For example, below is AI’s answer to the question, “If I wanted to write a book that I wanted as many Americans as possible to read, what reading level should I target?”
To reach the widest possible American audience, you should target a 5th- to 8th-grade reading level. More than half of U.S. adults read below a 6th-grade level, and most bestsellers fall into this range. This accommodates the average reader, non-native speakers, and people scanning text on mobile devices.
Google AI, quoting from multiple sources on the subject
Wow. I have been missing my target audience by a mile. I need to return to proven writing principles, and practice them better than I have ever practiced them before.
It’s not a matter of dumbing down the writing. It’s a matter of not inflating the writing, not wandering off topic. In short, it’s a matter of avoiding academic bloat. That’s not dumbing down.
Besides, it wouldn’t be right to try to make things simpler than the Bible makes them. There are things in the Bible hard to understand. Even Peter admitted that.
2 Peter 3:15 …our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you,
2 Pet 3:16 as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.
I will be avoiding bloat – not hard-to-understand truth! I’ll try to do what legendary crime novelist Elmore Leonard said he did: “I try to leave out the parts that people skip.”
The solution for my wordiness is not just shorter words, sentences, and paragraphs. It’s shorter books, too. Specifically, I’m going to break up the three major implications remaining to be written for this book into a separate book or books. The good news for you is that I’m going to start this the day after tomorrow. As a result, you’ll be going directly into the material you have been expecting to see next – so I’m not postponing the content I’ve promised. And I’m going to thin out, if not completely rewrite, the 80 installments I’ve already written on the first implication. This means you’ll be seeing the second and third implications sooner.
Oh, and there’s one more aspect to all this…which I’ll explain tomorrow.
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