How to/How to not

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silentreader
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How to/How to not

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JimFoxvog
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Re: How to/How to not

Post by JimFoxvog »

It is a common mistake to ask the wrong questions when reading the Bible. Rather than asking "Who am I?" and "What should I do?," Jen Wilkin, ... suggests asking "Who is God?" and "What has he done?"
I think Jen is partially right in this. The God questions come first. But then the questions about ourselves are vital.
The other points seem good at first glance.
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Re: How to/How to not

Post by temporal1 »

Luke 24:45
http://biblehub.com/luke/24-45.htm
44 Jesus said to them, “These are the words I spoke to you while I was still with you:
Everything must be fulfilled that is written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.”

45 Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.

46 And He told them, “This is what is written:
The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day,…
“He opened their minds” .. is crucial.

i don’t believe the Bible can be studied in the same way new languages, computer codes, or, how-to manuals, are studied. our minds must first be opened (by Jesus, or the Holy Spirit.)

our ability to understand and accept God’s Word is not entirely our decision, nor entirely in our control.
the Holy Spirit determines outcomes. Truth is revealed over time, in different ways.

this is difficult, esp for the well educated, the wealthy, the strong, or, any of those who feel “in control of their own destinies.” (in my experience) these are the ones who struggle hardest.

fwiw. :)
she makes several points. (for me) the initial point is the necessity of the Holy Spirit for understanding. the Holy Spirit transcends human concepts of order.
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Bootstrap
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Re: How to/How to not

Post by Bootstrap »

temporal1 wrote:“He opened their minds” .. is crucial.

i don’t believe the Bible can be studied in the same way new languages, computer codes, or, how-to manuals, are studied. our minds must first be opened (by Jesus, or the Holy Spirit.)

our ability to understand and accept God’s Word is not entirely our decision, nor entirely in our control.
the Holy Spirit determines outcomes. Truth is revealed over time, in different ways.
I agree. In fact, I think it's really helpful to assume that we are in denial and we need God to show us where we are in denial or resistant to what he is saying, and to pray specifically that the Holy Spirit will work through that, laying down our own preferences or understanding.
temporal1 wrote:this is difficult, esp for the well educated, the wealthy, the strong, or, any of those who feel “in control of their own destinies.” (in my experience) these are the ones who struggle hardest.
I suspect this is hard for all of us, and there's always a danger when we decide that it's harder for someone else than it is for us. I particularly like studying Scripture in groups where people have very different backgrounds, where we all pray for this kind of openness to God's voice and all listen to each other.

We all need to let go. We all need to let Scripture tell us things we aren't humanly ready to hear. We're often more aware of difficulties we suspect others may have than we are of our own.
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Bootstrap
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Re: How to/How to not

Post by Bootstrap »

1. We don't let the Bible speak for itself.
Yes, I think it's crucial to let the Bible speak for itself, and especially to read entire books over and over so we aren't cherry picking. I think it's also helpful to notice questions you have, write them down, and see if the answer becomes clear as you - I find starting with questions much more helpful than starting with answers.

She identifies this with treating the Bible as a book about God rather than a book about us. I'm not quite there - often it tells us about God, often it tells us how God worked in other people's lives or how they lived out his call. If we want to let it speak for itself, we shouldn't start out with our own ideas about what it will say if we let it speak for itself, we should read each passage and each book repeatedly under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and let it speak.
2. We allow our hearts to guide our study.

We often turn to Scripture for help or hope when we are feeling discouraged or seeking peace. Because of this, we can tend to approach the Bible primarily as a way to feel better.
I think we should start by letting the Bible speak for itself, and I do find it helpful to do one round of Bible study that is really about what it meant to them back then. But after that, I also need to apply it to my own life, and that really does mean bringing my heart into it. I think it would be more accurate to warn about constantly using the Bible as a way to feel better, to prove to ourselves that we are the better Christians, to settle theological disputes, to find things to criticize in others, etc.

Another way of looking at it: the Bible is mostly about us serving God, not about God serving us. But we need to serve God with our whole heart - and our whole minds.
3. We skip over large swaths of God's Word.
This is really important. "A text without a context is only a pretext", and many Christians read only very short passages or even individual cherry-picked verses. To get the Bible into your heart, I really do think it's essential to read whole books, preferably repeatedly. After all, if you want to understand any other book, you do have to read it, not just a page here or a page there. The Bible is no different.
5. We fail to see the big story of Scripture.
Also important, but you can often understand a single book without understanding everything, and for most people, the big story builds over time. And sometimes systematic theologies and other attempts to make the big story simple and clean actually obscure what's going on in individual books.
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Re: How to/How to not

Post by MaxPC »

temporal1 wrote:Luke 24:45
http://biblehub.com/luke/24-45.htm
44 Jesus said to them, “These are the words I spoke to you while I was still with you:
Everything must be fulfilled that is written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.”

45 Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.

46 And He told them, “This is what is written:
The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day,…
“He opened their minds” .. is crucial.

i don’t believe the Bible can be studied in the same way new languages, computer codes, or, how-to manuals, are studied. our minds must first be opened (by Jesus, or the Holy Spirit.)

our ability to understand and accept God’s Word is not entirely our decision, nor entirely in our control.
the Holy Spirit determines outcomes. Truth is revealed over time, in different ways.

this is difficult, esp for the well educated, the wealthy, the strong, or, any of those who feel “in control of their own destinies.” (in my experience) these are the ones who struggle hardest.

fwiw. :)
she makes several points. (for me) the initial point is the necessity of the Holy Spirit for understanding. the Holy Spirit transcends human concepts of order.
Amen.
It's also difficult for those who think it's all about the Greek and treat it like an opportunity to write a thesis instead of a means for God to speak to the individual on issues in one's life. Open the Book, open the heart, open the mind and open the study with a prayer to God for enlightenment during the time alone reading the Word has been the best way to grow as a disciple in my experience.
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Max (Plain Catholic)
Mt 24:35
Proverbs 18:2 A fool does not delight in understanding but only in revealing his own mind.
1 Corinthians 3:19 For the wisdom of this world is folly with God
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Bootstrap
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Re: How to/How to not

Post by Bootstrap »

MaxPC wrote:It's also difficult for those who think it's all about the Greek and treat it like an opportunity to write a thesis ...
Of course. Which is why I haven't mentioned Greek in this thread. Most people really are much better off reading a good translation, the translations are good. Context, on the other hand, is really important, and you don't have to be a scholar to read an entire chapter or book rather than individual verses taken out of context.

Of course, for some questions, Greek does come in handy, and people ask some of those questions on MN. But that's not what daily Bible study is about.
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Re: How to/How to not

Post by Bootstrap »

I think Jen's point in the OP is largely to discourage an emotionally-driven, me-centric approach to the Bible that says the Bible is about me. I think she goes a little overboard at times, but she makes some really good points. The thing we want to avoid is shallow look-say interpretation where we make the text say what we want to hear.
Rather than asking "Who am I?" and "What should I do?," Jen Wilkin, author of Women of the Word: How to Study the Bible with Both Our Hearts and Our Minds, suggests asking "Who is God?" and "What has he done?"
A great deal of Paul's writing is about who we are in Christ as a result of what God has done and how we should live as a result. That makes it hard to separate these questions. But it's also very hard to see what he is saying one verse at a time, which is why reading in context is important. And it's hard to understand what Paul is saying if I'm mostly bringing my own issues and theologies to the text. The important thing is to let the text speak, and to listen to whatever it says, even if that's not what we're particularly interested in yet. And to me, the real weakness of Jen's argument is that she introduces her own preconceived notion of what the text is saying. Different texts say different things.

There's a natural order that seems to work best. I really like to start by praying for enlightenment, aware that we all tend to deceive ourselves or be dull of heart. But I think good Bible study involves all your heart and all your soul and all your strength and all your mind, it can take effort, you spend time not understanding things or even not being all that interested yet until God's spirit gets ahold of you - perhaps days or weeks later. There are some verses you may never understand completely. But by reading the text, in context, and letting it speak for itself, it burrows down into you over time. It's not an instant fix, and you never know when the scripture you have stored in your heart will bear fruit. Sometimes you instantly know how to apply the text to your own life, sometimes it takes a little longer, some passages may not be directly applicable to your life (I don't know how to apply the last chapter of Judges to my life, for instance).

There are people who have very strong gifts of biblical interpretation who have little formal education, so we should not confuse the two. My friend who recently died at 96 was an excellent Bible scholar even though she had no formal training and rarely referred to commentaries, relying primarily on the text of the King James Bible. It was hard to miss her witness of love, extended to generations of her own families and many other people's families over her entire lifetime. And she knew the text inside and out.

And ultimately, we apply scripture together as a community. Some people may have more of a calling to study the text than others, but people with different gifts may have real insights on what it looks like to apply it. For instance, one person may pay careful attention to what the text says about love, but another person may have important insights on what love looks like in real life in the kinds of interactions we have every day, and another person may be aware of needs in the community that we can minister to. That's why studying in groups is so important, and it often bears the most fruit in groups that have different gifts and insights.
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Re: How to/How to not

Post by MaxPC »

MaxPC wrote:
temporal1 wrote:Luke 24:45
http://biblehub.com/luke/24-45.htm
44 Jesus said to them, “These are the words I spoke to you while I was still with you:
Everything must be fulfilled that is written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.”

45 Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.

46 And He told them, “This is what is written:
The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day,…
“He opened their minds” .. is crucial.

i don’t believe the Bible can be studied in the same way new languages, computer codes, or, how-to manuals, are studied. our minds must first be opened (by Jesus, or the Holy Spirit.)

our ability to understand and accept God’s Word is not entirely our decision, nor entirely in our control.
the Holy Spirit determines outcomes. Truth is revealed over time, in different ways.

this is difficult, esp for the well educated, the wealthy, the strong, or, any of those who feel “in control of their own destinies.” (in my experience) these are the ones who struggle hardest.

fwiw. :)
she makes several points. (for me) the initial point is the necessity of the Holy Spirit for understanding. the Holy Spirit transcends human concepts of order.
Amen.
It's also difficult for those who think it's all about the Greek and treat it like an opportunity to write a thesis instead of a means for God to speak to the individual on issues in one's life. Open the Book, open the heart, open the mind and open the study with a prayer to God for enlightenment during the time alone reading the Word has been the best way to grow as a disciple in my experience.
Addendum: normally I prefer to avoid making consecutive posts but I want to be sure to say that Neto and others translating the Bible into local languages is a wonderful effort and these translators manage to do so without turning it into a cold academic exercise, God bless them. They also show the locals how to read the Word and apply it to their lives. One of the lessons we learned (and continue to learn) in Catholic World is that those cold academic exercises usually do nothing for the scholar's discipleship heart. Sitting down with the Word and prayer to learn about one's own flaws in order to grow in our relationship with God is the best cardio exercise of all.
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Max (Plain Catholic)
Mt 24:35
Proverbs 18:2 A fool does not delight in understanding but only in revealing his own mind.
1 Corinthians 3:19 For the wisdom of this world is folly with God
silentreader
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Re: How to/How to not

Post by silentreader »

Bootstrap wrote:I think Jen's point in the OP is largely to discourage an emotionally-driven, me-centric approach to the Bible that says the Bible is about me. I think she goes a little overboard at times, but she makes some really good points. The thing we want to avoid is shallow look-say interpretation where we make the text say what we want to hear.
Rather than asking "Who am I?" and "What should I do?," Jen Wilkin, author of Women of the Word: How to Study the Bible with Both Our Hearts and Our Minds, suggests asking "Who is God?" and "What has he done?"
A great deal of Paul's writing is about who we are in Christ as a result of what God has done and how we should live as a result. That makes it hard to separate these questions. But it's also very hard to see what he is saying one verse at a time, which is why reading in context is important. And it's hard to understand what Paul is saying if I'm mostly bringing my own issues and theologies to the text. The important thing is to let the text speak, and to listen to whatever it says, even if that's not what we're particularly interested in yet. And to me, the real weakness of Jen's argument is that she introduces her own preconceived notion of what the text is saying. Different texts say different things.

There's a natural order that seems to work best. I really like to start by praying for enlightenment, aware that we all tend to deceive ourselves or be dull of heart. But I think good Bible study involves all your heart and all your soul and all your strength and all your mind, it can take effort, you spend time not understanding things or even not being all that interested yet until God's spirit gets ahold of you - perhaps days or weeks later. There are some verses you may never understand completely. But by reading the text, in context, and letting it speak for itself, it burrows down into you over time. It's not an instant fix, and you never know when the scripture you have stored in your heart will bear fruit. Sometimes you instantly know how to apply the text to your own life, sometimes it takes a little longer, some passages may not be directly applicable to your life (I don't know how to apply the last chapter of Judges to my life, for instance).

There are people who have very strong gifts of biblical interpretation who have little formal education, so we should not confuse the two. My friend who recently died at 96 was an excellent Bible scholar even though she had no formal training and rarely referred to commentaries, relying primarily on the text of the King James Bible. It was hard to miss her witness of love, extended to generations of her own families and many other people's families over her entire lifetime. And she knew the text inside and out.

And ultimately, we apply scripture together as a community. Some people may have more of a calling to study the text than others, but people with different gifts may have real insights on what it looks like to apply it. For instance, one person may pay careful attention to what the text says about love, but another person may have important insights on what love looks like in real life in the kinds of interactions we have every day, and another person may be aware of needs in the community that we can minister to. That's why studying in groups is so important, and it often bears the most fruit in groups that have different gifts and insights.
Sometimes I find Paul hard to understand, period, possibly because he is dealing with a local issue.
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