And for something a little light-hearted, check out this satirical report on the “Home Bible Study Leader Asks If Anyone Else Has Any Blatant Heresy They’d Like To Share.”
HT: Caleb Olshefsky
The Best Advice on Becoming a Better Bible Reader
David Mathis has the best advice I’ve ever heard on how to become a better Bible reader:
Read the Bible.
Seriously. You don’t need a degree or huge theological library. The very best thing you can do is develop the habit of daily Bible reading. Mathis’s short video will encourage you in this practice.
How to Get the Main Point of a Large Section of Scripture
In this audio interview, John Piper gives a great analogy of a detailed jigsaw puzzle to explain how to pull the pieces of a text together into a main point. He then models how he did this with Psalm 8. It’s very well done.
The Real Reason We Don’t Read Our Bibles
I’ve heard many reasons why people struggle to read their Bibles. My co-blogger Ryan has written about many of them:
- I’m not smart enough to read the Bible.
- I don’t have enough time to read the Bible.
- The Bible is boring.
- Bible study is complicated.
- I don’t need to read the Bible.
- I’m not motivated to read the Bible.
Of course, in our most lucid moments, we’ll acknowledge these reasons are lame. But they continue to ensnare us on almost a daily basis.
So I appreciated Brandon Smith’s recent article, “The Real Reason We Don’t Read Our Bibles.” Smith suggests that the underlying excuse behind all the other excuses is that we forget that God’s word is living and active. That the living God is still speaking to us today and meeting with us in the pages of his word.
Want to know what God thinks? Not just what he thought, but what he thinks? Open your Bible. The Spirit lives within you to help you understand God’s will and character, to help you taste and see something fresh and new that you’ve never seen before. A passage you read five years ago might speak to you differently today, because the living God speaks to you through his living Word, right here and right now.
If only this truth would get under our skin, the rest of our excuses might evaporate into the vaporous void of nothingness they are.
Smith gets this just right. Check it out!
What Is the Subject of Your Bible Study?
I appreciate Jen Oshman’s brief reflection on women’s books and Bible studies. And, as with most good advice for women, it’s not just for women.
If that Christian book on your nightstand or if your women’s bible study points you back to you, then may I please encourage you to put it down and give it some thought?
Bible Study for Ordinary Canadians (And the Rest of Us)
I recently had the opportunity to appear on Indoubt, a podcast for Back to the Bible Canada, where I spoke with host Isaac Dagneau about Bible study for ordinary people. We spoke about why believers study the Bible, how to do it, and what role the Holy Spirit plays in our Bible study. The 28-minute audio episode could serve as an introduction to the topic of Bible study for ordinary folks.
The Myth of Literal Bible Translations
Because this blog is for ordinary people, who don’t typically know Greek or Hebrew, we don’t write much about translation issues. But once in a while there’s an opportunity to speak to an issue that impacts ordinary Bible readers broadly. One such issue is the popular, yet misleading, assumption that some English Bible translations are more literal than others.
Bill Mounce, Greek scholar and author of one of the best-selling Biblical Greek textbooks, wrote recently about translation philosophies, and the popular misconceptions of what they mean. Mounce has served on translation committees for both the ESV and the NIV, so he’s well qualified to comment on a variety of philosophies.
Speaking about the two main categories, he writes:
Most people say there are two translation camps, formal equivalent [word-for-word] and functional equivalent (or dynamic equivalent) [thought-for-thought]. The longer I am in translation work, the more I see how simplistic this division is.
There actually are five methods on translation with three sub-categories for the handling of gender language. Translations are all on a continuum, overlapping one another, and hence it is misleading to picture them as different points on a line. I am guessing, but for example, about eighty percent of the ESV and the NIV are the same, once you account for different translations of individual words.
Mounce goes on to explain that, except for a few interlinear Bibles (which aren’t really English translations), no English Bible is literal.
The word “literal” should never be used of any other form of translation since all of them, every single one, despite their marketing, rarely translate word-for-word. They will say they translate word-for-word unless it does not make sense or misinforms, but that is a red herring argument. They are never consistently word-for-word, unless you can find a translation that translates John 3:16 as, “in this way for loved the God the world so that the Son the only he gave in order that each the believing into him not perish but have life eternal.” No Bible on the market is “literal.”
Mounce goes on to describe more nuanced categories of translation, which should inform how we think about our English Bibles. In addition, he addresses the matter of gender language, arguing that there is no English translation in existence that is “gender neutral,” and we should not ignorantly use the term to describe any well-known, modern English Bible.
Mounce’s full article is useful and easy to read; it uses no Greek. Check it out!
When Being “Christ-Centered” Goes Too Far
Writing for Logos Bible software, Mark Ward summarizes an article from a recent theological journal, explaining the unhelpful extreme side of “Christ-centeredness.”
I think the swing [away from Christ-less moralizing] has done great good: American Christianity has indeed suffered under man-centered readings of the Bible which offer all law and no gospel, all duty and no delight, all rules and no relationship. And yet the ease with which I just tossed off those three slogans points to the pendulum problem: any time a movement reaches the slogan-generating stage, people will go trampling over necessary nuances to grab their party’s banners and wave them at their enemies. Pretty soon the pendulum picks up so much speed that it whooshes way past plumb.
Ward then summarizes a theological journal article which analyzes Psalm 15 and shows us how to read it in its original context. There ought to be a category in our thinking for “meaningful if imperfect obedience,” as we see on the part of Noah, Simeon, and others. Being Christ-centered does not mean we speak only of our sins and failures.
Check it out!
Not By Sermons and Books Alone
Following up on last week’s “check it out,” John Piper was asked if he plans to write a commentary on the Bible. After saying no, he elaborates:
I suppose there is a kind of commentary that would put the emphasis on helping people find the meaning themselves. That’s the kind I would want to write if I wrote a commentary, because there’s a deep conviction behind this; namely, that over the long haul, strong Christians are created not by sermons and by books alone, but by a personal encounter with the word of God, the Bible itself.
Piper goes on to explain what sort of questions he’d like to see commentaries (and the people who read them) ask.
It’s a great, short answer to an excellent question. Check it out!
The Limits of John Piper’s Ideas
John Piper answers a question from a listener about why he’s churned out two recent books focused on the Bible. He tells of a third book on its way, and he gives three reasons for this focus in his remaining years:
[First,] I don’t expect any of John Piper’s ideas to survive me or be useful when I’m gone if they are not faithful extensions of the meaning of God’s word into life. My authority is zero; God’s authority is everything. Whatever I have said that accords with his truth shares in his authority. [Second,] I desperately don’t want people to substitute my books or my insights for their own inquiry into the Scriptures. [Third,] generations to come, until Jesus returns, are going to face new crises, new challenges, new issues that I have not faced and others have not faced. Therefore, if people depend on what I’ve written or what others have written, they’re going to be swept away when the challenges come that we never addressed. But I have total confidence in the Bible for meeting those future challenges.
I have not yet read his latest books, but I can heartily recommend his motivations. Check it out!
