DEEPENING FAITH THROUGH BIBLE STUDY

DEEPENING FAITH THROUGH BIBLE STUDY

Introduction

The Bible continues to be the foundation on which Christians base our faith, and the source to which we turn for guidance. Obviously, Christians disagree rather hotly on interpretation of scriptures. As “liberal” Christians, it is imperative that we teach our children and youth about the Bible and from the Bible. If we neglect Biblical study and understanding from a liberal perspective, we abandon scripture and its interpretation to our conservative brothers and sisters, and their reading of the text becomes the dominant perspective in our society and culture. Our children may grow up in our churches but their understanding of what the Bible says will be filtered through the ideas and understandings of the religious right, God bless them.

The Bible has been used to oppress women and sexual minorities. It has been used to justify war, slavery, and domestic abuse. It has been used to keep people in poverty from rising up in righteous anger at economic injustice. It has been used to perpetrate destructive environmental policies and practices. It has been used to silence intellectuals, scientists, and revolutionaries. On the other hand, the Bible has been used to inspire people to fight for economic justice, to fight for equality of gender, sexual orientation, race, age, and physical ability. It has been used to help people celebrate their sexuality, to celebrate their creativity, to celebrate the amazing goodness of creation. It has been used to stop wanton destruction of our ecosystems. The Bible is one of the most powerful influences on Western Civilization and global relationships. To ignore it because it seems to be ancient and irrelevant to modern culture is perilous.

The Bible is a fabulous library of songs, poems, and stories of cultures stretching and growing in their understanding of the Divine, their understanding of healthy human relationships, and understanding of our responsibility to the earth and all of creation. I believe that God’s Spirit has been involved in the entire process of the creation of the Bible and its continued use. I do not believe God sat down and wrote every word and e-mailed it to us. It is a collection of writings written, edited, and translated by thousands of people who filtered each word through their own time and cultural understanding. And yet, God’s love and call to growth and justice still shines through.

The people who wrote the Bible did not have our modern understanding of “History”. They were not trying to get the facts straight. They were trying to record their understandings and encounters with the Divine in language that would make sense to their readers. They used metaphors and vivid imagery to convey the glory of the Divine and human interaction with the Divine. The question is not, “Did that really happen?” the question is, “What does that mean in our lives?”

I love the Bible. I can’t stress how important I believe it is for all Christians to study it, or at least to have a working understanding of who wrote it, when they wrote it, what was going on culturally at the time, and what it means in our world today.

Here are a few tips on Bible Study.

· Use a good modern translation with lots of notes and background. My recommendation is The New Revised Standard: Oxford Annotated. It is also interesting to use Jewish translations of the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament). Many Christian translations lose the original meaning. Remember, Jesus was Jewish, and until Paul started going out to the Gentiles near the end of the 1^st century, all Christians were Jewish!

· Remember that the Bible is not a novel, it is a library! Don’t start at the beginning and try to read to the end. You wouldn’t walk into the library and read all the books starting with the A’s and read alphabetically to the Z’s!

· If you read something that strikes you as amusing, laugh! There’s lots of bizarre and outrageous stuff in the Bible. Some of it was intended to be ironic or funny.

· Before you do any Bible study, invite the Holy Spirit to be with you and help you understand what you are reading. Oftentimes the Holy Spirit works through good commentaries and books about scripture. Some of my favorite are:

· WomanWord, WomanWitness, and WomanWisdom by Miriam Teresa Winter

· The Five Books of Miriam: A Woman’s Commentary on Torah by Ellen Frankel

· The Torah: A Modern Commentary edited by W. Gunther Plaut and published by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations

· Dirt, Greed, and Sex: Sexual Ethics in the New Testament and Their Implications for Today by L. William Countryman

· Anything written by Robert McAfee Brown or Marcus Borg

Enjoy, learn, laugh, and let the Bible help deepen your faith and the faith of the youth with which you work as it has done for millions of people over at least three millennia!

Deepening Faith: Youth Ministry Resources and Some Miscellaneous Advice

Rev. Lizann Bassham, Front Porch Spirit Press