Why Study Scripture?
Scripture is the revealed word of God. This is significant for many reasons, one of which is that there are things we learn from Scripture that if God hadn’t communicated these things to us, we otherwise couldn’t know them.
In Romans 1:16-25, Paul talks about people who aren’t Christians and how there are some things they can learn from nature and life experience about God, but it is the Gospel—the full story of Jesus Christ and all that he is—which is truly the power of salvation for us. We haven’t been left in the dark. Jesus is the light of the world!
In fact, nearly every genre of education has some debt of gratitude it rightfully owes to Scripture. Many of the world’s best universities were founded as institutions for the purpose of studying the Bible or training ministers. Whether you’re reading self-help, history, archaeology, fictional literature, nearly every foundational idea is in some ways derivative of the stories and teachings handed to us by Scripture. You need to know the Bible, if for no other reason, simply to be a literate, well-rounded person. But as Christians, we need to know Scripture because it is our most reliable guide to the mind and heart of God, and therefore, the purpose and reasons for which human beings exist, and for which we do the things we do.
Scripture on Scripture
There are numerous verses where Scripture comments on the value of Scripture. Psalm 119—the longest Psalm!—is all one long love letter to God’s revealed word. But one good place to start is 2 Timothy 3:16-17.
There are a lot of reasons for which people might try to use Scripture, but the fundamental aims of all Scripture are rooted in concerns of theology—who God is and what God is like—in order to inform our understanding of ourselves and our praxis—who we are and what we do.
The fourfold explanation in 2 Timothy 3 is useful. Scripture will be highly effective for you if you seek to learn, to challenge in a holy direction, to correct your life course, and to become an increasingly righteous person. All of this leads us to be well–equipped.
Engaging with Scripture
To begin with, you have a variety of ways in which you can study Scripture from a format perspective.
- READING. The Bible as we have it is a book. Or rather, a collection of books in a variety of types of literature. You can simply read it. Whether in print or on a screen, all are available options. Also, have you ever tried reading it out loud to yourself? It changes some dynamics!
- LISTENING. Not all people learn well by reading. The earliest generations of Christianity up until the printing press learned the words of Scripture primarily by hearing it read. There are audio Bibles by numerous readers, with or without dramatic sound effect, which you can use to help you engage with the word.
- WATCHING. Similarly, many people have learned much about Scripture through the visual arts including modern dramatic arts and film. There are now numerous adaptations of many parts of Scripture into formats which we can engage in much the same way we engage our news and entertainment.
Three things to tweak:
- Pacing. How regularly will you encounter Scripture? When you do, what quantity will you attempt to cover? For this purpose, there are many effective types of Bible reading plans, as well as Bibles arranged for scheduled reading. Chronological Bibles. Bibles with selections for daily reading of Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs. There are many ways to approach this!
- Granular Detail. When you study, you can decide how close you want to get to the details in the text. You might want to utilize a Bible, commentary, or guided study which helps you analyze individual words to try and understand each part of every verse and what it means. This is one way to do a deep dive.
- Grand Scope Detail. Another way in which you can do a deep dive in Scripture is to pull back and learn more about the bigger picture of how things flow. Some books arrange Bible readings in a way that helps you get a look at the larger scope. You can often make better sense out of a single passage by looking around at its context. The same is true of viewing some books in light of other books, whether it’s other passages of Scripture on similar topics, or other words of a particular speaker in other places.
Challenge: Creative Ways to Process Scripture
Thinking about some of the tweaking possibilities mentioned above, I want to share a few ideas you consider as ways to help you engage with Scripture differently. In my experience, when I vary my approach, it leads me to different kinds of insights and observations.
Option 1: Print Scripture
If you want to do a deep engagement with a particular piece of Scripture, consider printing it out. If you go to biblegateway.com you can pull up any passage in a variety of versions, then click a gear button to change several options about how the passage appears. You can even have it leave out footnotes, verse numbers, headings, cross-references, etc. If you want to help yourself read Scripture in an unbiased way, remove all the apparatuses that you typically use and you may really surprise yourself with what insights you glean.
Even if you don’t change up the formatting much, something about going off to read a single page of Scripture without anything else to engage or distract can be a useful method for increasing your focus.
Option 2: Mega-Sized Print
I picked up this practice from a friend, Leslie Chapman. I’ve learned that some great Biblical thinkers like N.T. Wright use the same practice. It’s simply this: print off a larger passage of Scripture, perhaps even an entire book, and tape the pages all together so that you can look at the whole text all at once. This is an amazing method for note-taking, for drawing lines and arrows, for examining repetition and patterns in texts, for highlighting themes with certain colors to see emerging patterns, etc. It is a terrific way to familiarize yourself with a larger section.
Option 3: Artistic Processing
So one of the important aspects of engaging Scripture is that you find ways to help you internalize what you are reading. Many people will say—truthfully—one of the best ways to learn something is to teach it. You’ll work extra hard to prepare! But even without prepping to teach, there are other ways to help you go deeper.
Some people enjoy using journaling Bibles with extra wide margins for note-taking. Sometimes these are mostly written. Other times they encourage artwork and doodling. If you are an artistic person or learn well through note-taking, this is a great practice to consider.
My personal preferred method is to write Haikus based on Scriptures that I’m studying. Haiku is a Japanese form of poetry that contains three lines. The first has five syllables, the second has seven, and the third has five. A haiku is a challenging way to summarize a larger set of thoughts into their essence. I sometimes like to read a chapter, then write a few haikus based on what I understand it to be teaching. See the links below for some of my haikus.
