Bible studies are designed to make people perform a minimal level of self-examination. "Did anything like this happen to you this week?" "Can you think of anyone in your life who was a particularly good example of this?" And the exercises are things like "Look for three instances this week where you see God at work in your relationships with other people." This does give me some explanation of why I find them mostly infuriating. For those of us who already do this naturally (or even obsessively), this is not useful. I don't find when I push for more of this at study that people recognise all that quickly what I am saying - even very smart people. Some people have that introspective, self-examining style, some don't. It is a type of person, not a measure of a person. And yet once we have done some of the questions and move to the discussion phase I find the things that they say often very helpful. And I'm glad that I came. It's just takes a while to get there.
I would think that maybe somebody shgould design Bible studies that operated more at my level (obsessive) and then I think "For what?" A lot of these people are a good deal nicer than I am, and might be thought of as better Christian examples to others. What advantage do we think that increased self-observation provides, really? Our motives and those of others. The people writing these studies may know more than I have been giving them credit for. It's just that it's impossible for me to sit through the first 40 minutes waiting for the last 20.
The amount that I do is likely excessive, providing no added value after some initial level and increasing tendencies to morbidity. Yet at least some seems to be necessary for the Christian walk. Perhaps this is why the Roman Catholics have clung to the sacrament of confession, which is much-neglected among Protestants.
3 comments:
In group studies these introspective questions tend to get in the way--and half the time they don't go the direction I think would be most fruitful.
OTOH, I try to encourage people to illustrate lesson points as we go along with things they've experienced, so I don't know that skipping the tag question is going to be a huge loss for us.
I do better with the Gospels (esp. parables) than with any of the Pauline epistles, because the parables are concrete and give me things to work on in my own behavior. The epistles are so abstract, I just can't get hold of anything.
I have serious doubts about the whole "life-application" approach to Bible study. I think that the goal of studying the Bible should be to understand what the writers/speakers were trying to get across. Life applications and theological speculation should come later. Getting the text right should be job #1.
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