Graduate 139: Bible Study and the Old Testament

Is Bible study important? The question may strike some ears as very odd. Any good Christian would surely agree that Bible study is an important part of the Christian life. And yet so many people seem to struggle with this fundamental discipline and, whatever they may say, the trend in American churches is that fewer and fewer people are seriously engaging the Word. I would not be even be surprised to learn that larger numbers of serious Christians--by which I mean to refer to (often young adult) Christians who are enthusiastic about restoring New Testament Christianity and reaching out into the community and serving and being a light--; I would not be surprised to learn that even these, apparently strong, Christians place very little stock in spending regular time in the word.

I often come back to this story in my own thinking about these issues (and I think I may have mentioned it in previous entries). I remember being a part of a conversation during my freshman year of college in which one student was expressing her dissatisfaction with Christian outreach ministries, especially to the homeless and poverty-stricken. She complained that Christians spend too much time focusing on things like prayer meetings and Christian education and, as a result, spent less time actually helping the poor than their non-Christian counter-parts. I could certainly appreciate her concern and her point of view, and yet, as I listened, I couldn't shake the conviction that the direction of her thinking was ultimately mistaken.

Questions along similar lines have come up for me, especially in relationship to the Bible study that I lead. One of the questions that continues to bother me and exercise my mind is this: How important is it to go really deep into the text? I realize that I'm teaching people who think at different levels. Some are really brainy and enjoy studying and working out puzzles and paradoxes and want to know all that's going on behind the scenes in any given Scripture passage. And there are other people who don't have the patience for exploring deep subtleties and aren't interested in a lot of the history and context and are much more 'practically,' this-worldly minded. And I struggle with the recognition that neither of these kinds of lives is inappropriate. People are different, and I worry that my preoccupation with the subtleties of the biblical texts has more to do with my own braininess than with what is actually necessary in order for these people to have a meaningful walk with God.

The simple fact is that we need non-brainy people. It was a non-brainy friend who called Triple-A and got a tow-truck for me when my car got a flat tire. If she had been a brainy person, like me, she probably would have been totally clueless as to what steps to take. There's nothing wrong with being non-brainy. So my question is, when it comes to Bible study, when I push people to go deep, is it because it's really important for them that they go deep, or is that just my brainy impulse (my attempt, perhaps, to make everyone like me) and should I not be pushing that angle so strongly?

Still more recently, this question came up in a conversation that I had with a friend about studying the Old Testament. In my Bible study, we just finished a series that took us through the entire book of Proverbs. It was a challenging series. The structure of Proverbs does not make it conducive to certain familiar Bible study techniques and appreciating the wisdom recorded in that book requires thorough and concentrated mental engagement. In the course of this conversation about Bible study, one idea that was suggested was that the New Testament is more practical and immediately relevant to our lives now, and, therefore, easier (if not more worthwhile) to study. We need to be mindful of the fact that it's simply more difficult for people to get into the Old Testament books and we need to focus, anyway, on what will most impact their lives.

Is this right? Is this an accurate description or assessment of the shape and character of the Scriptures and of their relationship to Christians and the successful Christian life? I think this direction of thought is not only badly mistaken but a serious hindrance to spiritual growth and to successful Christian living.

There are a couple different points that I would like to address. One has to do with the idea that we need to be focused on what is "practical." Have you noticed that theme in each of the illustrations I've used? Christians seem to be increasingly interested in what is practical. A second issue has to do with how much study is too much study or more study than is really necessary. And that is related to the third issue that we will address: What exactly is the point of Bible study? What is it good for?

To begin with, we need to get away from the practical/impractical distinction. This is an almost-completely unhelpful distinction. Or if we need to hold on to that distinction, than we need to consider carefully what counts as practical. And that will require getting clear on what exactly our goal is. If our goal is just to aid in meeting people's physical needs, it may be that prayer and Bible study are not helpful for that. On the other hand, if our ultimate goal is the salvation of souls, then prayer and Bible study would seem to have a more significant role to play. Still, on the other hand (i.e. the third hand) maybe evaluating prayer and Bible study in terms of their instrumentality for reaching our goals is simply the wrong approach. Maybe our goal should not be feeding the poor or winning souls, but living in the power of God. Of course, these three are not mutually exclusive; that is just the point. But we also need to realize that if we pursue either of the former two without the latter, then we will have completely missed the core of New Testament Christianity that is being elevated in some circles today. We do not pray and study the Bible because doing so is instrumental for either feeding the poor or winning souls--where those activities are abstracted from a growing spiritual life and relationship with God. We pray and study the Bible because those are indispensable means by which we draw closer to God.

It's worth raising the question at this point: Is drawing closer to God practical? Does drawing closer to God allow us to save more souls? Does drawing closer to God allow us to meet more needs? Hopefully you can see the absurdity of these questions. If we think that saving souls can be divorced from relationship with God, then we have seriously misconceived what is involved in the salvation of souls to begin with. And what good will filling stomachs and building shelters do--making people more comfortable for their short life on this globe--if their souls are lost for eternity. And why on earth are we evaluating closeness to God in terms of its usefulness for accomplishing either of these goals. To ask whether drawing closer to God is practical for some other end, is to miss the point that drawing closer to God is the final end. Certainly there is a relationship between drawing closer to God and being a light in the world, and the one will lead to the other, but the one is not for the other.

Now, to look at the other side of the coin, we need to consider: are there people in the church who do focus on prayer and Bible study to such an extent that they do neglect evangelism and helping the poor and serving the community and actually being a light in the world. Certainly, there are people who practice a form of Christianity that completely misses these crucial points that are emphasized over and over and over again throughout the pages of Scripture. But we must be careful, in reacting against that bad tendency, that we diagnose the source of the problem correctly and do not, inadvertently, throw out the proverbial baby with the bath-water. The problem, in our churches, is not that we are too much focused on prayer and Bible study. In fact, the problem may be that we are not focused on it enough. Or another way of putting it, we practice a form or semblance of prayer and Bible study that is not actually the real thing, and so we miss out on the life-transforming impact of those important spiritual disciplines.

How can we pray and study effectively? That is the question. And this is where we get to the issue of how much study is really necessary. Again, some people have a predisposition to study and scholasticism, etc., etc. and some people do not. So why require that everyone dedicate themselves so extensively to Bible study. On this point, perhaps surprisingly, I am prepared to make a concession. I recognize and appreciate that different people have different dispositions, and so it may not be necessary for all people to spend many hours each week reading and studying the Scriptures. However, if a person were to adopt this course, I would insist that he or she also abstain altogether from watching television and movies, and refrain from all other forms of popular entertainment including music, magazines, and the Internet.

Well, that is a radical and outrageous suggestion, isn't it. Usually its only very radical and unreasonable people who insist on total avoidance of every form of popular entertainment. This sounds decidedly backwards and reactionary. But stop for a moment and think. I am not saying that television and movies and popular music are bad. I am not saying that in the least. I am just saying that if your disposition is such that you simply cannot engage the Scriptures in a sustained and serious manner, then you should avoid these forms of entertainment. On the other hand, if you can and do apply yourself to careful Bible study, then there is nothing wrong (in principle) with taking in television, movies, etc..

Now why would I set up the options in this way? The simple fact of the matter is that, through television, films, and popular music (as well as magazines, newspapers, the Internet) you have a direct pipeline into your home of all sorts of ideas--some of which are good, some of which are neutral, and many of which are contrary to what will actually lead to a successful and flourishing life. (Just think of advertising.) And if you are constantly drawing upon this pipeline without anything to counter-balance, then you are just surrendering yourself to those voices and their messages. In addition, we assimilate so much from this pipeline with little or no effort, and the activity of reading and studying the Scriptures does require so much more exertion, that one ought to expect that careful study and sustained effort would be necessary in order to effect this counter-balancing measure. If on the other hand, this popular culture pipeline does not feed into your home, then it will require considerably less in order for you to flourish in the way that God intended you to. At least, the number of contrary messages that you will have to fight against will be much smaller.

To put it in slightly stronger language--if you do not have the mental acumen necessary to read through a passage of Scripture, study it, understand it's significance for the original audience, interpret it's message, apply it to your life, and put into practice what you learn, then you do not have the mental acumen to sift through the myriad of messages that you receive in a single hour of television in order to determine what you should and should not accept and how you should act in response. This is not to say that you are any less of a person; it's just to say that you should avoid certain media. If a person is not able to control his alcohol intake, he should avoid hanging out in bars. If a person is not able to control his gambling habit, he should not visit Las Vegas. The principle is exactly the same.

Well, I'm prepared to acknowledge that I may have stated things a bit over-strongly. After all, talking about people's "mental acumen" can get very personal. But hopefully you can see the point, even if it's poorly made. Additionally, one reason for putting the point so strongly is just to highlight the fact that I think very few if any people are in the category of people that I described. We may have become a culture of people with short attention spans, but that doesn't mean that we are incapable of reacquiring those skills and capacities that we have lost--if we are willing to put forward the necessary amount of effort.

At this point, we've talked a bit about the problems with interpreting Bible study in light of it's "practicality." We've also said something about how much Bible study is minimally necessary. Now we'll touch on the topic of why Bible study is important. This point is related to the former two. If people come to Bible study for the wrong reason, then it makes sense that they will fail to derive from that activity the benefit for which it is intended. Here we can make one further point about "practicality."

I take it to be a fairly common idea that one of the main purposes of Bible study is to find out "what we are supposed to do." Whether through direct commands or the examples of the early church, people come to the Bible in order to find out how they ought to live their lives and what they ought to do. Here is that very 'practical' mindset at work. The problem is that there are vast portions of the Bible that offer very little on this topic. It's not hard to imagine what a person with this agenda must go through. He or she starts out in Genesis. It's not clear that Genesis has a lot of practical application but at least it's full of interesting stories. The same is true of much of Exodus. But then this reader gets to the books of Leviticus and Numbers and there are laws and there are genealogies and all this stuff that applies to the nation of Israel and doesn't apply to you or me. You get back into the interesting stories in Joshua and Judges and Samuel and Kings. But even if you don't get lost in all this "impractical" "history," you'll still eventually run up against the Psalms. And Psalms is a book full of people talking about how great God is or how terrible God is or how happy they are or how sad they are and it's completely impractical. Proverbs is supposed to be practical but who can understand it? Ecclesiastes is just depressing. Song of Solomon is weird. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention Job which is almost wall-to-wall speeches. Then you get to the prophets and between the interesting stories there are these long exhortations--again--to the people of Israel with nothing of practical value for me. Finally, you get to the New Testament and there's stuff about Jesus (and we tend to like stuff about Jesus) and there's the stuff about the church and that has application to me. And so people focus on the New Testament (that last quarter of their Bible) while neglecting the Old Testament (the first three-quarters).

Now you may have figured out that I don't buy the story that I'm telling you, but I think that this can help us to understand why people have such a hard time with Bible study. They are reading the Bible in order to find out "what they are supposed to do" and that's not the only or even the main focus of the Bible. The further irony of this point is that people who read the Bible in order to find out what they should do often don't do what they are supposed to do. They read the passages that are written to them and then say that the teachings are too difficult or too impractical or not feasible or not realistic and so they end up not doing what the Bible says to do. What a marvelous strategy.

If the Bible is supposed to tell us what we're supposed to do, then why don't we do it. And certainly there are passages where the Bible lays out very clearly what we are supposed to do. I would suggest that a lot of it has to do with our picture of the world and reality and God. Does that sound awfully abstract? Perhaps. But think about it for a moment. Think about those excuses: "It's not realistic, it doesn't make sense in this world, maybe in a different time or different place or under different circumstances, but the commands of the Bible just don't make sense in this world we live in." But just what world is it that we live in? Is it the world pervaded by the Spirit and presence of God or is it the dog-eat-dog world that is cut off from that fellowship with our creator and Lord. If you're living in that latter world, there's little reason to wonder that you find God's commands difficult. You need to shift your thinking and take seriously that God is real and present and start to interact with Him and engage His resources and draw upon His strength. But you can't do that if your way of approaching and thinking about the world is informed primarily by this-worldly sources of information. (Did we say something earlier about television being a pipeline into your home of the world's ideas and values?)

I might go so far as to say that the principle function of the Scriptures is to reveal to us the character of God. Because it is that knowledge of God's character--acquired in the course of interactive relationship, of which Bible study is a part--that really transforms our way of thinking and approaching the world so that we can actually do the things that God tells us to do. (...the things that we already know that we should do but don't do because of fear or doubt or anxiety or insufficient time or a general suspicion that those commands just don't make sense in this world.)

How do you come to know who God is and what He is like. Simple answer: Bible study. And it has to be fairly intense Bible study because when we're not studying our Bible's we are constantly bombarded by all sorts of contrary messages (from the world) about the nature of God and reality in general.

It is also, on just this point, that study of the Old Testament becomes crucial. Recently I heard a speaker who gave sermons on (1) the Syrophonecean woman who asked Jesus to heal her demon-possessed daughter and (2) the woman who anointed Jesus' feet with perfume at the home of Simon the Leper. In both cases, he made a comment that bugged me. He said that these two individuals had an instinctive understanding of the love of God. Somehow they understood that their request would be answered or that their gift would be accepted even though social and cultural taboos forbade them to do what they did.

An instinctive understanding? How about an informed understanding? You see, there's a problem with the idea that they had only an instinctive understanding: what does that mean for the person who doesn't have that instinctive understanding. Either you have it instinctively or you don't. If you don't have it instinctively, then what avenue is there for you (or me) to access the grace and power and mercy of God in the way that these two women did. In a world where people are already convinced that no one has a handle on truth and everything is relative, appealing to an instinctive grasp of the love of God can offer nothing to a person who doesn't have that instinct but desperately needs that touch from God.

And, ultimately, I suspect that neither of these women had an instinctive understanding. Rather, they had an informed understanding of God's nature and recognized in Jesus the hand and Spirit of God. Where did they get that understanding of God's nature? Not from the New Testament. It hadn't been written yet. They got it from the Old Testament.

Now that will just sound bizarre to some Christians, because they are so used to the idea that the God of the Old Testament is mean and judgmental and vindictive while the God of the New Testament (revealed in Jesus) is nice and friendly and loving. These sorts of Christians will just be puzzled by the idea that someone could look at the Old Testament and come to understand God's loving nature. But that is just the problem. We are not informed about the Old Testament. We don't study it. And is it any wonder that we, then, lack the basic understanding of God's goodness and grace that these two women had? We need to take seriously, again, that the God of the Old Testament is gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness. As we grow in our knowledge and understanding of that--that is what will change and transform our lives. (That is what will enable us to do the things that the Bible says that we should do and that we know we should do and that we don't do even though we know we should.)

Over and over, Jesus marvels at the unbelief of the Jewish people. He marvels because they had the Old Testament and so should have been prepared for his coming. Those people who actually did recognize Jesus as Messiah--we have a tendency to think of them as the exception to the rule. But, really, the people who didn't recognize Jesus did so because of certain entrenched ideas that did not come out of the Old Testament. The entire Old Testament experience of the Jewish people was intended to pave the way for the coming of the Messiah--to prepare a people who would receive Him. And this work was successful. We see it's success in people like the Syrophonecean woman and Mary the sister of Lazarus.

At this point, it would be appropriate to launch into a discussion of the way in which the Bible presents its material. Again, people often have trouble with studying the Bible because they read it in the wrong way. This is as much a hindrance as reading it for the wrong reasons. But I think I've already said more than enough for one entry so I'll leave that discussion for another time. Hopefully you found something worthwhile in this entry. Again, I hope that where I speak very forcefully or polemically, that is reflective of my enthusiasm and deep concern about the issues, and is not reflective of some deep-seated belligerence on my part toward anyone. I hope that you can and will have read it in that spirit.

Well, it's been fun for me to continue to think and write about these issues.

--

God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.