# What Happens When Someone Reads the Bible With Fresh Eyes A podcast conversation about an influencer who started reading Scripture, what familiarity may cost believers, and how churches can walk patiently with people who are new to the Bible. Source: Pray.com — https://www.pray.com/articles/what-happens-when-someone-reads-the-bible-with-fresh-eyes Author: Adam Mesa Category: Faith & Wisdom Published: 2026-10-22 Last revised: 2026-10-22 --- ## Key takeaways - **Fresh eyes see plainly.** A popular influencer began reading the Bible and took it at face value, and the pastors saw Scripture doing its work on him. - **Familiarity can dull us.** Believers who have heard the Bible for years can lose their awe, or never have read it for themselves. - **Conviction comes before conduct.** The pastors said that handing a new reader a list of rules produces behavior change, while meeting Jesus changes a person. - **Patience is love in action.** Instead of recruiting newcomers to our own church, we can ask what they are feeling and what questions they have. - **Discipleship is shared life.** It happens in ordinary hours, with people who give us room to ask questions. - **A Bible is a simple gift.** The conversation ended with a challenge to give one to someone who may never have opened it. ## An influencer opens a calfskin Bible Pastor Adam Mesa started the conversation by telling his fellow pastors about Leo Skeppy, a social media creator with millions of followers who built his platform on shopping hauls and rants about culture. Mesa said that within the past 30 days Leo "got interested in reading the Bible, and it's, like, wrecking his life." Mesa described Leo's posts with some humor. He bought an expensive calfskin Bible, and now, Mesa said, nearly every other post shows him reading Scripture. Leo is open about what he is learning, including his frustration with the Old Testament. Mesa played a recent clip for the group. The panel noticed that someone known for unfiltered opinions was now processing out loud what he was reading. ## Matthew 5 hits a new reader In the clip, Leo said he had read a passage about calling people worthless and about looking at people for sexual pleasure. He pointed to the line about tearing out an eye. > If your right eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it away from you. For it is more profitable for you that one of your members should perish than for your whole body to be cast into Gehenna. > > ([Matthew 5:29](/bible/web/matthew-5/#v29), WEB) Leo said the drama of the passage landed with him, and that what he took from it was that Christ is about connection and Satan is about disconnection. He talked about dehumanizing people, said he had been celibate for two years, and said his desire for pornography was gone. He also said his attraction to men had not changed, and he did not expect it to. The pastors did not wave any of that away or hurry past it. They pointed out that he was reading the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5 through 7, and that he was convicted by what he read. ## What familiarity takes from us The first reaction around the table was a question for believers. One pastor said Leo is taking the text at face value because it is new to him, and wondered what would happen if the rest of us lost our familiarity and read again with awe. Familiarity, he said, can rob us. Mesa added that a new generation is arriving with no biblical background. He had spoken at a leadership gathering in a more traditionally Christian state, and pastors there told him that everyone around them had been to church or had met the Bible somehow. He had told them to get ready for something that would reach them eventually. In California, Miami or New York, he said, some families have not been to church in three generations. The group also noted that many Christians never built their convictions for themselves. When a newcomer asks to be shown where something is in the Bible, some of us have no answer. The pastors mentioned a trend where people are asked whether a phrase is really in Scripture. Their example was the idea that God will never give you more than you can handle, which many people assume is a Bible verse. ## Behavior change and a changed heart The pastors were careful about where Leo stands. They said he has not confessed Jesus as Lord, and he still speaks of Christ as a teacher. They also said he holds views they disagree with, and they expected the Holy Spirit to keep dealing with him as he moves from the Gospels into the cross, the resurrection and the letters of the New Testament. One pastor said that holding a person like that to the standards of a regenerated believer turns it into behavior modification instead of transformation. The prayer they offered was that he would encounter the God who made him, and Jesus who died and rose again. The pastor who raised repentance said the Greek word means a change of mind, and he pointed to [Romans 6:23](/bible/web/romans-6/#v23) on the wages of sin and the gift of God. > Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God. > > ([Romans 12:2](/bible/web/romans-12/#v2), WEB) The same pastor put it simply: we work from God's love, and we do not work to earn it. That is why, he said, the best thing to offer someone is an encounter with Jesus, before asking them to fix their life. ## Please don't eat each other alive The pastors imagined the day Leo asks for a church recommendation. They worried that Christians would start fighting in the comments: go here, don't go there, that place doesn't teach the Bible. They said that is a poor welcome for someone new, and for the many young people reading those comments and deciding whether the church is worth a look. Mesa said that apart from churches that teach heresy, such as those that skip the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus or affirm sin, the disputes are usually small ones. They listed hymns versus electric guitars, coffee and hats. In his view, someone who goes to a church you disagree with is better off than someone who goes nowhere. He added that our first instinct should be to celebrate, instead of recruiting the person to our own congregation. One pastor reminded the group that Jesus confronted the religious and also reclined at tables with sinners, and that reclining at a table meant associating with the people there. He suggested asking a new reader what questions are coming up. He also pointed to love being patient in 1 Corinthians 13. > Love is patient and is kind. Love doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t brag, is not proud, > > ([1 Corinthians 13:4](/bible/web/1-corinthians-13/#v4), WEB) He said the word for patient means long-suffering. In his words: "We have forgotten how to suffer long with people." He pictured the years God waited on us during lives we are not proud of, and asked why we would not wait on someone else. ## Walking with people, one hour at a time The pastor nicknamed Fuego told a story from his days at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. The dorms were full, and a man who happened to be driving by offered him a place to stay. At the house, the man and his wife were already reading and praying early in the morning. They hosted other people they were discipling. The next morning the man dropped him off at the college, where Fuego's class was marriage 101, and the guest teacher turned out to be his host, who taught discipleship 101 instead. Fuego took the lesson: "Discipleship is life on life." He said it is messy, it happens in grocery store runs and phone calls, and it needs people beside us day by day. The pastors also talked about the baggage people carry, including trauma, and about what language we use. One pastor said that the first time he opened a Bible in church and was told to turn to Genesis, he did not know where it was. His friend sitting next to him told him it was Genesis, and he closed his Bible and could not concentrate on the rest. Another said he never knew about the resurrection until he went to church, and had thought Easter was about bunnies. From the stage, they said, it can help to say there is a table of contents and to let people know they are not expected to know how to find a passage. One pastor said a church's character is shaped by what it permits: "Culture is what you allow and what you tolerate." Someone had kindly walked him through the Bible and suggested he start in John or Romans instead of Genesis, and he wanted other people to receive the same patience. ## What this means for you The conversation ended with a challenge. One pastor asked listeners to write down three names, perhaps a family member, a coworker or a celebrity, and to buy a Bible for one or all of them. He suggested saying something like: I would love for you to read this, whether you believe in God or not, because I feel God wants to speak to you in it. You can also think about your own reading. Are there passages you stopped hearing years ago, or beliefs you have only heard and never checked for yourself? You might read a chapter of the Gospels as if you had never met it before. If someone around you has just started asking questions, you can ask what they are noticing and listen before you correct or recruit. That patience may be the best way to welcome a person who is just starting to read.