We’ve all made mistakes in our Bible study time. Believe me, when I look back on my journey of faith and what it looked like years ago, I cringe. But honestly, we all start somewhere, and when we make mistakes in our study process we can learn from them.
I want to share with you three mistakes I made in my study time that are pretty common to a lot of people, and how you can learn from my mistakes an avoid some of the pitfalls of studying Scripture.
One would think that any study of Scripture is good, and while this is true to some degree, we want to be in the Word, we want to be growing, and small steps do lead to big steps, we can also make some serious mistakes with the text which can lead to bad theology and dangerous interpretations. So here are three things to avoid and ways you can counter these mistakes.
Mistake #1: Reading Scripture in Isolation
This mistake is super easy to do. We want to study Scripture so we decide the best way to do that is to get up and make a schedule of our day, sit in a cozy chair and open up our Bible to any passage and start reading. After all, Scripture is alive and active, so who cares where I start or what I read, as long as I read, right????
WRONG.
The old adage, “A verse a day keeps the devil away,” doesn’t actually work in long term Bible study. While we don’t need to get caught up in spending hours a day reading through the entire Bible every year just to check it off our list, we do want to make sure we are reading Scripture looking at the small sections in light of the whole book. If we bounce around in the text, with a few verses here and a few verses there every day we run the risk of misinterpreting the text because we are laser focused on just a part of the whole.
The better way to read Scripture is consider the whole of the text (which we call the meta narrative) and then study a smaller section of the micro narrative. For example––read through the entire book of Matthew or Luke and then go back and study the individual parables or healings. This way you can study the individual parts of Jesus’ ministry understanding the small stories in light of the big story. Or take your time and read through the entire Bible so you understand the creation-redemption narrative from beginning to end and then go back and study an individual theology or exposition of a book in light of the entire book.
Another aspect of this mistake is studying Scripture in personal isolation. We aren’t meant to do life alone, or studying Scripture alone. So join a Bible believing church, get involved in a Bible study, take a class at a Bible college or BSF group…learn and grow in your study time with others, so that as you have questions, as you wrestle out things with the Word of God you have others around you to help you from wandering into dangerous misinterpretations.
Mistake #2: Reading Scripture with Yourself as the Focus
Another super easy mistake to make is inserting ourselves and circumstances into every text. I know it’s a mistake I made plenty of times while I was studying Scripture early on.
While the Word of God is applicable to our lives, our lives are not the story of the text. Scripture tells us the story of God–His works, His ways and His will. God mediates through human activity, and we can see His character through the events of character’s lives, but the story is always about God and what He is doing.
When we begin to make the text about ourselves we lose the focus of God’s redemptive work. The goal is to interpret the text in light of who God is and what He does, and then apply the text to our lives by asking, “Now that I’ve learned about God, either what He wants of us, or He works…how can I change my life because of this text?”
With this perspective all Scripture becomes applicable to us. But we stay away from making the text self-focused.
Mistake #3: Building a Theology on One Verse
This mistake can be similar to mistake #1, but often is a result of mistake #1…if we don’t know the full scope of Scripture and don’t understand the character of God, it can be easy to over emphasize one aspect of the text and minimize another aspect because we are laser focused on certain verses or one verse specifically. If we take a verse out of context it becomes easy to manipulate the text to make it say what we want it to say rather than changing our views to match the text.
We must remember that the books of Scripture were not broken up into chapters and verses, so when we read the text we want to make sure to take the context into consideration. We must study the text as a whole. The whole story, parable, poem, or prophecy. When we cut up the text we lose the value of the teaching by minimizing things to one line or verse.
Studying the whole of God’s Word allows us to base our theology on the consistent pattern and revelation God gives about Himself. We can base our theology on salvation, redemption, death, etc. on the consistent teachings of God’s Word and understand that there are a lot of things in Scripture that are not as clear as other things, and those issues can become divisive if we aren’t careful. It’s okay to say, “I just don’t know, I have opinions and ideas, but I can’t say with certainty on this non-essential issue, because Scripture just doesn’t tell me enough about it.”
As students of Scripture is so important that we treat the text with integrity and honor God as we study and share His Word with this world. All of us are going to make mistakes, and trust me, I’ve made all three of these mistakes at some point. But once we understand how to read the text well, and practice those principles, we can help avoid these easy mistakes.
Keep diving into God’s Word, friends.
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