Metaphors and phrases ‘speakers’ should not use in youth talks…

I was at a retreat this weekend and I heard this phrase:
“Instead of reading the Bible we should let the Bible read us.”
Now I think I understand this convoluted phrase and I think I understand the motivational intention behind it. If I have it right it goes something like this:
- - We should let the concepts in the Bible provide evaluation of the content of our lives. - -
More or less on the surface this seems like a fairly decent statement assuming that youth understand what you mean.
That is where the first problem arises. All too often it seems that in some parts of the evangelical Christian experience, there tends to be a propensity to transform these metaphoric ideas into literal realities. (Especially in the case of impressionable young people.) (As an aside: I used to do ‘devotions’ like this: I placed the open scriptures on my face and promptly fell asleep – allowing the Bible to read me?!?) Unfortunately, it seems many ‘preachers’ all too glibly throw these Christian ditties into their talks in an attempt at deepening/heightening the spiritual intensity of their message. Without adequately giving contextual and figurative explanation to these phrases, the real meaning is lost. They become merely spiritual phraseology for youth to bandy about. (Is there any lack of this?) So for instance when one young person uses the phrase with one of their compatriot youth group members, they mutually understand that the speaker is merely referring to a heightened state of spirituality. And can you imagine the confusion for someone outside of the compatriot faith circle when they hear this phrase?
And if the first problem is that very few of the people who use this phrase will actually intend what it means. The second problem is equally obtuse. We assume that it is possible for us to actually do what the phrase intends.
My suggestion is that allowing the Bible to ‘read’ our lives is almost completely objectively impossible. First of all, in order to allow the Bible to read us we must read it – first! We bring all our personal preconceptions and inclinations to that reading. (Hardly an entirely a reliable way to extract the truth inside Scripture) In an individualistic world it must be said that a phrase like this is especially dangerous because it suggests that we can trust our own interpretation of the Scriptures and then without prejudice allow it to evaluate our behaviour.
Now, I realize that I may be reading too much into this but…
I think in general we must get away from our public predisposition to using these ambiguous metaphors…
And to be completely I have used my fair share of spiritual hype talk metaphors but it is something I am trying to exercise from my speeches, talks, and discussions.