Today we went to Bible Bowl in Cookeville. Both of our kids participated. That means that for the past three months they have studied questions about I Corinthians and Galatians. I say they studied the questions, because they didn't spend much time studying the actual book. They tried to memorize the answers to sample questions, but even after three months, they couldn't tell me what those two books of the Bible were about. They must not have remembered very many answers because they didn't get many correct today at the competition. I told myself and them that the numbers didn't really matter. In my own mind, however, I'm thinking that if the numbers don't matter, and they didn't learn much of anything, what was the point? If my children spend three months studying something, I want them to understand it on "game day."
I see a parallel with an problem that I've observed among some Christians. They concentrate so much on the words of the Bible and following them to the letter, that they forget about what the words actually mean. They don't practice the spirit of Christianity...loving God, loving your neighbor, spreading the Gospel, etc. That brings to mind something else from Bible that Jesus talked about....Pharisees...and Jesus had a lot to say about that "brood of vipers." **Shudder** I hope I can somehow instill into my children a love of the Bible and not just for the words, but for what it teaches.
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