Three Questions
Remember when you were in school? You started out in grade school (or kindergarten, etc.) of course. Think back for a minute. What was it like? What kind of “classes” did you have? If you are like me you probably didn’t think of what you learned as classes at all. Most of us probably had only one or two teachers that we saw in any given day. It was (and still is) very common for one teacher to teach all of the main subjects to you. Did you get any say in what you learned?
Not really.
And that makes a lot of sense when you are very young. How would a small child know what there is to learn, let alone be able to choose different things to study? But then you hit middle school or Junior High School, and something amazing started to happen. You actually got to choose some of your classes. And each class was taught by a different person. What amazing freedom this was! Well, not really, but it seemed like it in comparison to elementary school. By High School you got to choose a lot of classes, and the freedom expanded. And if you happened to attend a college or university you experienced even more freedom. You got to choose it all.
So each of us had a time when we didn’t get any choice what to study, which meant the reason to study something was because we had to. But as we grew older we switched to a system that let us choose everything. And what is the reason to study when you get to choose? You learn things because you want to.
Is this how it works with the bible?
Are there two ways of reading it? I think so. One way is because we feel we have to do so. Maybe we are told to do it or we feel guilty calling ourselves Christian if we don’t crack open the good book. But what about another way? What if we read the bible, not because we felt we had to, but because we wanted to?
Have you ever asked yourself, before reading the bible, ”What am I going to get out of this?”
I was in a bible study once that lasted about nine months. My “class” met once a week for about two and-a-half hours each week to discuss passages that we were assigned. We covered most of the bible in that time period. And it was a great experience, because everyone wanted to be there. Everyone wanted to learn more about scripture. During that study we were asked the same three questions almost every week. They turned out to be a great way to approach bible reading, and they allowed us to get a lot more out of what we were reading. I want to share those three questions with you so you can try it out too. The next time you start to read any part of the bible ask yourself any or all of these three questions:
What does this passage tell me about God?
What does this passage tell me about humanity?
What does this passage tell me about the relationship between God and humanity?
Let’s apply this to some passages right now to get a feel for it.
Genesis 1:14-19
14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.17 God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning —the fourth day.
Now ask yourself the first question. What does this tell us about God? It tells me that God is orderly, and giving. It also tells me that sacred times are important to keep track of. It is almost like light was created so that we can keep track of time. Now let’s skip to the New Testament:
Luke 6:5-6
6 One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the kernels. 2 Some of the Pharisees asked, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”
3 Jesus answered them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.” 5 Then Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”
What does this passage tell us about humanity? There are “sacred times” mentioned here too, in the form of the Sabbath. But what have people done to this? Here we have people (Pharisees) that are challenging Jesus because he and his disciples were eating heads of grain on the Sabbath. Jesus puts them in their place with his comments. We get to see something of the relationship between God and humanity here too, don’t we? God has created sacred times and called them good. But humans have taken that creation and used it for their own purposes. They have made laws that have nothing to do with the spirit of God’s creation.
Let’s do one more.
Exodus 3:1-11
3 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”
4 When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”
And Moses said, “Here I am.”
5 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 6 Then he said, “I am the God of your father,[a] the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.
7 The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
What does this passage tell us about God and humanity? What does it tell us about the relationship between God and us? Here we learn about “sacred place” instead of time. We also learn that God chooses flawed people to do great things, and that humanity likes to push back on divine commands.
Now you have a taste of how this works. I hope that you will ask yourself these questions the next time you approach scripture. You will very likely get a lot more out of what you read.
God Bless