“I fear that as Christians we can sometimes spend so much time studying about the Bible or talking about the Bible that we don’t just read it. To use a similar analogy, we are like people who spend hours preparing a meal but never sit down to eat it.” - P&D
“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” (Proverbs 27:17)
Don’t Just Study the Bible, Read It
Since 2005
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Discussion
NewHow?
How does that work? I’m struggling a bit to understand what kind of “study” process this is and who is training people to do that. … and why? I mean, laziness is always a strong motivational factor with humans, but in this case, getting a good result would have to be harder that way, I would think, not easier.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
NewStruggling as well
It is true that elite chess players do indeed spend a fair amount of time learning strategies, openings, and the like, but at the end of the day, they become elite chess players by playing chess. So with Aaron, I am befuddled as to how one can actually be said to be studying the Bible without actually reading it.
On the flip side, if the author is warning of the hazards of being overly academic, that point is well taken. I've heard a number of pastors say that seminary was one of the most hazardous things ever to their faith, and sometimes an excess of academic rigor can steal one's love for the text. To that reality, sometimes the best way to recover one's love for His Word is to simply read it without any plan in mind.
On the light side, being overly academic about God's Word could also be similar to having an overly analytical way of approaching one's wife, and if one is lucky, she'll pull you close and say "shut up and kiss me".
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
NewRigor
I think we’re in little danger of excessive rigor in our study.
But the post does raise questions in my mind about how students of the Word are being trained, if they are swapping external analysis entirely—or even partially—for the reading of the text itself. It’s really bad method on every level. If you’re doing it right, you begin with the text and at every step of the journey your external digging is directly related to some part of the text. The text is central, and you read it over and over an over inevitably during the study process. So what I’m saying is that training in any decent method erases the ‘study vs. reading’ conflict.
But I do think it’s easy to neglect synthetical study: that is, study of how your passage and its message integrates with the whole of Scripture—its narrative and its assertions on the topics in front of you. Synthesis is pulling stuff together, connecting. Analysis is taking stuff apart. They are both really important. (And synthetical study involves a lot of large-chunk reading vs. small chunk examination.)
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
NewYup, and snicker
Agreed, and I got a kick out of that. Well played.
That noted, I would posit that there are times where an academic approach does not in itself equate to intellectual rigor, times when someone is trying to fit a fancy academic approach that does not really conform to the text at hand. One can see it all the time in college English and philosophy departments.
But that is a quibble. Agreed that actual academic rigor is not in surplus these days, alas.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.