After we studied Mark during our Common Ground core meeting it lead me to reminisce about my journey in studying scripture(still in progress). I've found that the most dangerous thing to do when studying the Bible is to allow it to always affirm or reinforce my values. The problem with this is that if I believe that the Bible is the living, inspired word of God then these words, with the help of the Holy Spirit, should lead me to know more about Him every time I read them because God is always speaking. But, if my own thoughts are never challenged can I say with integrity that God is speaking?
In my few years of studying the Bible I've learned that reinforcement and affirmation are often the outer disguise of pride and immaturity. Pride because if every time I read the Bible I ONLY discover what I already thought about the Bible, it implies that God really just speaks the same thing every time and I already know most of it. Immaturity because if everything I read is just a reinforcement of what I previously knew then I gain nothing knew and my mind, heart and soul are never challenged to grow. I am pretty sure this ain't how God operates.
What does this look like? At a very young age, I remember learning "Jesus loves me" from John 3:16. As a young disciple I needed to know that, I needed to know God himself gave his son for me and saved me from my sin and the sin condition of the world. I needed this to be instilled in my heart and never forget it. It was good.
This verse became toxic in college, where I believed that God loved me and other Christians and everyone else needed to get on board or burn. I never told anyone this or acted on it but it was a pseudo-truth that resided in my heart. It was in an InterVarsity Bible study that I learned how to look at the Bible with fresh eyes. This meant looking at the Bible expecting to learn something new every time. In doing this I finally realized that a key part of John 3:16 is that "God loved the world". He loved the WORLD! I learned that Jesus loves the world and calls me to this same love. How immature and prideful of me to think "everyone else", i.e. the world, needed to just jump on board, excluding myself from the love of Jesus they needed to encounter. I came to realize that not only did Jesus love me, but wants me to follow his example in loving the world exactly like He did. And this left me knowing that I had a lot to learn because loving people who have different values, different beliefs and different ways of living is hard.
This is what scripture study leads us to. It leads us to more awe, more curiosity, more pathways of maturity and ultimately how to love more. Studying the word of God will show us how big he is by showing us how much we don't know. But trust me, you will be eternally grateful for the little you learn.
So the next time you study scripture, confess to God that you don't know everything about him and then ask him to to show you something new.
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