How much work are we prepared to do? Do we simply want to let someone do the work for us? As a teacher, I have seen that my students get much more out of the lesson if they have familiarized themselves with the content beforehand. I need to do more work than my students. Teaching requires more than being able to use a DVD series to lead others. We should still be doing the work whatever “extras” we choose to utilize in our studies.

Only two weeks into my hermeneutics class and I’m already overflowing with the things I am learning. What I have been studying has me thinking about Bible study.

In the past, I’ve seen a lot of women’s bible study material. I do not hesitate to say that the majority of it was not good. A lot of it was fluff. A lot of it took verses out of context or disregarded the existence of a context. A lot read things into the text. A lot tried to impose 21st Century understandings on documents that were written three thousand years ago. Many of them don’t seem to expect the student to do any work, and I wonder how much work the writer has done. There are good ones out there, but there are many more bad ones.

Bible study is not a matter of what R.C. Sproul calls “lucky dipping;” that practice of closing our eyes, opening our bibles, putting our finger on a page, finding a verse, and waiting for illumination. The Bible is a divine book, but it is also a human book. And it’s abook, a work of literature. That will dictate how we approach it. Yes, the Spirit does guide us, but it won’t do the work for us.

There are many things that make Bible study a challenging task. Here is a small sample:

• The chronological distance between the events and the reader
• The original languages were not English
• The very different cultures of the Old Testament and New Testament worlds
• Our pre-understandings as readers

Do these challenges mean that we cannot understand the Bible? Certainly not! God intended for us to understand it, and we believe in the clarity of Scripture. We have the Holy Spirit to teach us, but that does not rule out hard work. I read this in my textbook:

. . . Being indwelt by the Holy Spirit does not guarantee accurate interpretation. Though we have no desire to diminish the creative work of the Spirit, the Spirit does not work apart from hermeneutics and exegesis . . .

. . . The diligent Christian with even an average education who is willing to study, and who has access to the fine tools now available, can arrive at the central meaning of virtually every passage in the Bible.

No matter how good Bible study resources are, we still have to do the work. How much work are we prepared to do? Do we simply want to let someone do the work for us? As a teacher, I have seen that my students get much more out of the lesson if they have familiarized themselves with the content beforehand. I need to do more work than my students. Teaching requires more than being able to use a DVD series to lead others. We should still be doing the work whatever “extras” we choose to utilize in our studies.

May I be so bold as to suggest that if we’re not comfortable doing the interpretive work ourselves we should think twice about teaching?

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