Bible Study: Change the Filter
Have you ever bought a new car and then noticed how many cars just like it were already on the highway? They had always been there but now you have a reason to notice them. There is a sense in which the human doesn’t find anything it’s not looking for. That same insight can apply to Bible study.
Now the right way to do Bible study is to read a passage without any preconceived notions of what it’s about. You should seek to understand the author’s original intent. You should ferret out what the text would have meant to the first readers. This method helps keep us from turning Bible study into an exercise to justify our prejudices.
But for the Sunday school teacher, there’s only so many times you can come to the same right understanding of a passage before it stops speaking altogether. We can use the insight of the new car to revitalize our Bible study and our Bible classes. This time, instead of reading the scripture with an open mind, read it through a thematic filter. Read a Luke-Acts looking for the role of women; read Genesis looking for the conflict between siblings; study Paul’s letters looking for autobiographical nuggets. By putting on a new filter before reading, suddenly you can find insights that you've read past a hundred times.
For example, I recently taught a class called “The Resurrection Chronicles.” We covered all the resurrection appearances of the Gospels and kept going through Acts and the Epistles. Once we were looking for it, we noticed how every sermon in the book of Acts had the resurrection of Christ at its center. We saw how Paul considered his experience on the road to Damascus as a true resurrection appearance. We saw the aspects of resurrection in baptism or the Lord’s Supper. We started to wonder why we have heard so many sermons on the death of Christ and so few on the resurrection. By choosing to focus the Bible study through the filter of the resurrection, we sharpened our study and communicated truths to the “been there; done that” crowd.
Next time you teach a class, instead of another quarter on Ephesians, find a new filter. Read a good introduction to a book and find some of the main themes. Pick one of the themes and read the book looking for that theme. You will be surprised how it revitalizes your Bible study.
Submitted by Rob Sutphen