This post is in memory of my Grandma, daughter of Finnish immigrants, who had to drop out of school at the age of nine to help her sister raise three kids while supporting herself as a laundress - thanks to the support of the community who previously hadn't needed a laundress. Grandma attended rural one room school that ran for 3 month terms. So how much formal education she had, I don't really know. But her husband had a bit of formal seminary training. She could match him in his theological knowledge. What made all the difference was she believed she could learn.
Here is her method - adjusted a bit for the fact none of us were born in 1885.
1. Pick a book like Silva, Moisés. Biblical Words and Their Meaning: An Introduction to Lexical Semantics. Revised and Expanded Edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994. which covers a subject you know little or nothing about - lexical semantics.
2. Run a concordance on the book and see how much vocabulary is unfamiliar. Now you can read and understand a text with some new terms, especially if they are defined in the text. So try the book.
3. Too many new terms? Look up "lexical semantics" in Wikipedia. See that it is a subfield of linguistic semantics ... and recognize that if you knew what that meant, you would have no trouble with the vocabulary. So see that linguistics semantics is a subfield of linguistics. Pick up an introductory linguistics book and repeat steps 2 & 3.
4. For many of us, given what we remember of what we were taught of English grammar, we will end up starting with a high school level grammar.
5. By carefully reading the grammar book one learns the vocabulary so that you can read the introductory linguistics books so that one can read the book by Silva.
Grandma gave herself a very good education by always being to start from what she actually knew rather than from what people expected her to know.
6. When reading Grandma gave special attention to what kinds of questions the book asked and answered. She didn't try to learn to do everything herself but she knew what kind of book or what person in the community would have the answer. By going to sources that actually knew the answers rather than people who would give her an answer to save face, she gathered a great deal of actual information. It didn't hurt that her husband's uncles ran the only academy (high school) in the county
7. Grandma applied a great deal of common sense logic and serious thought to what she learned. The result was that by the time I knew her, she'd been widowed for more than a decade, was called "Grandma" by everyone in the community and was recognized as a knowledgeable voice in the Sunday morning adult Bible class.
I was reminded of my Grandma when I was teaching a Bible class and a retired auto mechanic kept saying he was just there to provide transportation to his wife and that he left reading to his wife. In fact, by having worn out 20+ copies of The Imitation of Christ, the only book he read, he had learned a great deal of Bible knowledge and theology. He could match most members of a quite educated class.
So the point of this TIP:
- if you are going to read the Bible, get serious about it
- push the limits of what you can understand because different approaches to studying scripture help you learn to ask new questions when you read scripture.
- if an approach e.g. lexical semantics interests you, believe in yourself. Your interest should eventually get you to the point where you understand no matter how far back you have to go to find a starting point.
The Challenge - chose a book offered by Logos on how Bible study is done in an area you aren't trained or comfortable in. Work through it and share with us what you have learned that enriches your Bible study. It sure beats doing the same thing over and over and getting the same results.
