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Originally Posted by bimmette
Serious question, what do you discuss in bible study? I assume you're a bunch of adults and the bible hasn't changed so don't you know it well by now?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ******
Very good question... I know people who do this their whole lives and have wondered that same thing...
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Great question, and I actually quite enjoy talking about my faith, to the chagrin of some. But you did open the door....
I should preface the above with: I enjoy talking about it on here. I'm a little more flustered in person, though I try whenever someone seems genuinely interested.
So in this case (and I don't know if either of you have read the Bible, so I'm just going to assume not for now, just to pick a starting position), yes, I have probably read through the Bible at least once by now, and I do remember a bunch of it, but mostly the 30,000 ft view of it. But if you take the view that the Bible is the word of God, and therefore perfect, and "useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness", then every word / detail is important.
And so in Bible study, we study a very narrow portion - no more than a chapter, and often not even that, to try to understand the depth behind it. That can be coloured by any knowledge of society back then and how it would have impacted these verses, what the writer was conveying. And to see how that aligns with other portions of the Bible. We try not to read our own impressions / desires / views into the Bible (eisegesis), but rather understand what the Bible is saying (exegesis) which is usually through cross referencing to other portions of the Bible to expand on it. And often times this conflicts with what we'd "like" it to say. Truth hurts sometimes.
This will be a flawed example of course, because I believe the Bible is perfect and I don't believe there is anything else written that is like it...but this is the example that came to mind.
Take your favourite book (if you have one). When you first read it, you probably enjoyed it. Certain parts spoke to you, etc. If asked about it after the first time, you probably could recount certain parts of the book, give a reasonable summary of the book, but it would be at a summary level.
If you have ever gone back to re-read the same book - did you notice things you didn't notice the first time through and thought "Wow, that's neat". And appreciated the book even more? And perhaps third time through...noticed more.
Same thing with the Bible. We keep going back, because we keep finding things that we didn't see the last time. And the nice thing about small groups is that you have say 5-10 people in the room, all going through the same passage. So you have at any given time, 5-10 people seeing the same verse just a little differently and talking about what they were thinking about, how it could link to other passages, etc...which really opens up your own perspective on the passage. Especially when you read it and it looks pretty plain to you first time through.
To go back to my imperfect example - I guess you could use the example of a book study you probably had to do in school. If you were paying attention, I bet you heard others point out things in the exact same book that you never ever noticed, but were actually interesting and helped you understand the book better.
Same for small groups / bible study...it just helps us understand and deepen our love for our saviour, Jesus Christ, and our knowledge of God and hopefully equip us a little better to explain our faith to others. Sort of like what I'm trying to do here, instead of doing my T4's / T5's like I should be doing (but I honestly view this as more important - it is about eternal salvation).
Hope that helps!