Reading the Bible

I am reading a book called "Searching For God Knows What"by Donald Miller He just seems to know how to get to the heart of faith I really liked this section on reading the bible The tendency always seems to be that we overanalyze every verse and argue about its meaning instead of reading it and absorbing it as you would a poem and realizing that God is talking to you ..take time to really listen

"While having dinner with a friend recently she commented that the primary concern for Christians today is to translate the precepts of Scripture for a postmodern audience. And I don't know what postmodern means, but I kindly disagreed with her and wondered out loud if we didn't need to stop translating the Bible for a modern audience, an audience endeared to the simplification of reality, an audience that likes to memorize lists in an attempt to understand God. Perhaps if we stop reducing the text to formulas for personal growth, we can read it as stories of imperfect humans having relations with a perfect God and come to understand the obvious message He is communicating to mankind.....
I wonder what it would have been like to have studied the Bible and not been tainted by lists and charts and formulas that cause you to look for ideas and infer notions that may or may not be in the text, all the while ignoring the poetry, the blood and pain of the narrative, and the depth of emotion with which God communicates His truth.....
It wouldn't bother me at all to read the Bible without the charts and lists because a person could read the Bible, not to become smart, but rather to feel that they are not alone, that somebody understands them and loves them enought to speak to them--on purpose--in a way that makes a person feel human."