I therefore decided to give attention to the holy scriptures and to find out what they were like. And this is what met me: something neither open to the proud nor laid bare to mere children; a text lowly to the beginner but, on further reading, of mountainous difficulty and enveloped in mysteries. My inflated conceit shunned the Bible’s restraint, and my gaze never penetrated to its inwardness. Yet the Bible was composed in such a way that as beginners mature, its meaning grows with them. I disdained to be a little beginner. Puffed up with pride, I considered myself a mature adult.

—Augustine, Confessions, 3.5.9

Augustine points us to another important truth about reading Scripture. If we are to profit by it, we must choose to submit ourselves to the text rather than trying to put ourselves over it. Whenever we think we know better than God’s word, we will surely fail to be edified by it. But that’s true with everything, isn’t it? The minute we think we have nothing to learn from something or someone, we surely will not. Ah, the joy of human pride!