What is Wrong with Actually READING the Bible?

I've been listening to Dr. Gerald Bray's church history class via http://www.biblicaltraining.com/ (you can download entire classes and listen to them whenever you feel like it). Today he was talking about the Reformation and the history leading up to it. I found it interesting that the Catholic Church actually made it a heresy in the early 15th century (punishable via being burned at the stake) to translate the Bible from Latin to some other language. But this was a reaction to a "problem" that the Catholic Church was already dealing with. Thus the Reformation was a reaction to a variety of converging forces that led to one very simple thing: making the Bible accessible. Now, there aren't very many people in America that don't have at least one Bible in their homes. This is even true for many atheists. We are "Bible saturated" as it were. This is frightening for me because what I see is that nobody actually reads it and when they do they understand it to say things which are simply absurd, because they had some pre-conceived notion of what it said before they ever opened it. The Bible is a book, therefore it can be read and understood. This isn't that hard, but so many people seem to make it so much more difficult than it has to be. I know why that is, of course, because the Bible tells us things that we don't want to hear and we are a society now that feels justified in ignoring truth if it happens to seem "mean spirited" (a.k.a. just telling you what is going on). This is a big problem, though, because we shouldn't deceive ourselves: We reap what we sow (Galatians 6:7-8). That isn't God saying to us that he is going to give us what-for, though, that is just him warning us that we will suffer the consequences of our actions. That is a tough one for us today. Yes, and it is "mean-spirited," too. So most of the time we just stand by and let people fall in the gaping hole in front of them because if we say, "Hey, sorry to bother you, there is a gaping hole in front of you" we get "OH, THAT WAS SO MEAN-SPIRITED. THAT WASN'T VERY CHRISTIAN OF YOU!" Which is worse, though, the wretched consequences of their actions falling on them without warning or a few "mean-spirited" words of caution?