During a recent study series, my teaching team and I noticed a disturbing trend: many of our women did not know how to read and understand the Bible. Though they have faithfully attended church and Bible studies and small groups, they weren’t adept at reading the Bible properly. They struggled to understand the nuance of context or even, at times, the basic meaning of biblical terms. This is alarming, and we are working on putting together a Bible Basics Bootcamp to help address the problem.
In researching resources, I came across this little book by Matthew Harmon. He covers a lot of ground in just 132 pages. Unlike other resources, he covers just enough, but not too much. While there is room to go deeper in places, this is a terrific place to start! This leads me to my first point: there are MANY resources that cover the same material, and most of them have definite value. But they can be trite and too fluffy, which is not helpful, or they can be short yet technical (thereby not as approachable for beginners), which is also, not helpful. This little book seems to strike a nice balance.
The book is divided into three parts: Laying the Foundation, Reading the Bible, and Reading our Lives. Additional resources are at the end of the book and include information on genre, tips for pastors, Sunday school teachers, and small group leaders, and an at-a-glance page that summarizes the main tools needed to read and apply the Bible well.
In easy-to-read, bite-sized chapters, the author covers everything from the metanarrative of Scripture to reading the Bible with a Christ-centered focus (Luke 24) to how to rightly apply Scripture to our lives by asking the right questions. This is vital! How often have we seen verses slapped on coffee mugs that have nothing to do with their intended use? The tools in this book will keep us from error, which is something we should all desire for ourselves and the women we lead. How?
Armed with the knowledge shared in the beginning chapters, we are given four foundational questions to ask when reading the Bible:
1. What do we learn about God?
2. What do we learn about people?
3. What do we learn about relating to God?
4. What do we learn about relating to others?
Harmon unpacks each of these questions and kindly provides a handy list of sub-points beneath each one on the At-A-Glance page at the back of the book. Once we have the answers to these questions, we need to apply what we have learned. Harmon makes the point that the Bible was not written to us but for us (Chapter 4). This means that when we read God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, we need to understand this is not a universal command for all of God’s followers to go and do likewise (page 61)! God also does not intend for all of us to go, sell what we possess and give it all to the poor in order to follow Him (Matthew 19:21). So how do we apply these passages to our lives?
Harmon gives four more questions to ask here:
1. What does God want me to think/understand?
2. What does God want me to believe?
3. What does God want me to desire?
4. What does God want me to do?
Asking these four questions should land us in a place where we can put into practice what we’ve learned, regardless of the passages we’ve read. I do wish there were a workbook or study guide to accompany this book. That would
make it a turn-key solution for us to sit with our women and work through these topics together. Absent that, we will use much of the material in this book to help our women learn how to be better Bible readers and followers of Jesus Christ. To God be the glory!
