My sister looked up with a mocking
expression. “Oh, this is, like, official? Weird.”
I felt the color seep into my face as I
looked from her skeptical face to my friend who was just smiling. “Um, well…
kinda.”
I had decided I was going to write a Bible
study on Ruth for teen girls. My sister and a friend met with me and we started
going through the book of Ruth and tried to draw from it principles about how
we should live our lives as Christian girls.
We only met once.
I thought it
wouldn’t be very difficult, especially considering that I had once been part of
a girls’ Bible study through Ruth a couple years before. But when I
started trying to write it, my sister said, “Do you really think you can say
that from the passage?”
I didn’t like being challenged, and
eventually, the project dropped.
Looking back, I am so glad I never finished
that study and never tried to teach girls with it. While I’m sure there was no heresy,
I now see some major flaws in how I was approaching the Bible.
I recently read a book by Jen Wilkin titled
“Women
of the Word: How to Study the Bible with Both Our Hearts and Minds.” It is
an incredible book that I recommend
to every woman and girl, regardless of age or experience with the Bible. It is
reviewed on my blog here.
In it, she exposed some very common but misled approaches to God’s Word. I was
convicted and have since been praying that the Lord would change how I see,
read, and honor His Word.
In the Instagram Bible culture—a place
where I see Bibles full of hand lettering, Sharpies, washi tape, and watercolor—there
is a common theme of a lack of understanding of how to approach the Bible.
I wrote a blog
post for Phylicia Masonheimer
that addresses three major pitfalls in how we view and read our Bibles as well
as simple ways to remedy them.
I honestly believe that you can have a
completely different way of approaching Scripture simply from reading and
applying what is in this
article.
What are some erroneous ways that you have
approached Scripture or seen others approach it?
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