Regarding the Bible, here are three rules of study that most manage to resist quite successfully:
- Let us constrain ourselves to get out of the Bible nothing more than what was put there by its authors.
- Let us diligently get it ALL out—leaving nothing to assumption, glossing over nothing, neglecting nothing, dismissing nothing as unimportant. (Indeed, how can we KNOW it’s unimportant until we have learned what it means?)
- Let us responsibly count all our understanding of it as merely provisional until we have sorted and rectified the whole of it. (For who knows how a new discovery might undermine an earlier assumption?)
Such deliberacy in study is no casual undertaking. Quite a difference should be obvious between those few who are willing to walk that road to its end and those who would rather make early assumptions, never testing those assumptions by daring to learn the whole Bible, but simply affirming themselves again and again within their narrow field of concern.
The Bible has material in it that will surprise any of us, no matter what our particular model of belief might be. The people who are never surprised by things in the Bible are the ones who neglect the majority of the texts as unworthy of their time—as unworthy of being understood! Ironically, many people boast to some extent about how every word of scripture is God-breathed, but very few even have a plan (even if it is poorly followed plan) to study and to understand ALL the material that they believe God has breathed into the Bible. How can you expect to get an “A” as a student when you only read a fraction of the material given? And when you get a love letter, do you seek to understand only a portion of it?
Some memorize John 3:16, but who can come within a mile of telling you what Numbers 3:16 says? Some go on about the glory of Jesus’ resurrection, but who knows how to explain (and is even aware of) the resurrection of “many holy people” in Jerusalem immediately after Jesus’ resurrection? (Matthew 27:51ff.)
Sadly, for many, this grandiose talk about the glory of the scriptures is little more than platitude. Preachers are hired by the thousands to serve up platitudes for the masses, but a devout student of the scriptures can scarcely make a dollar for his work, for very few have any interest in following the trail so far as to reach its end.
It is difficult to overstate the irony of this.
