Memorize the Bible

I’m going to be talking about using index cards or a spreadsheet or a database program to do Bible study, and at first glance this might seem to cheapen Bible study. It might seem like we’re cramming for a final exam or just trying to play a Bible trivia game better than our peers, and that might not seem like “real” Bible study.

But the study systems intended for this website aren’t about cheapening or cheating Bible study. Instead, it’s all about getting a good factual foundation about what the Bible actually says throughout the whole of the 66 books rather than just seeing the Bible as a collection of nice verses and stories scattered about.

We’re just doing the equivalent of getting a better handle on basic Bible facts throughout the whole Bible in a way similar to singing the alphabet song when we’re little or using math flash cards to help memorize basic addition and multiplication tables when we’re a little older. As adults, we have long since moved beyond these temporary tools, but they had their place for a time.

We’ll use actual or imagined index cards temporarily to illustrate how the website will work, but at it’s heart the goal here is to first get you to interact with Scripture by crafting your own “titles”, “short summaries”, and later some other items, and this interaction forces you to do more than simply passively read or listen to Scripture. Then, through repeated use of these titles, short summaries, and other items that you create yourself, the repeated interaction quickly reinforces what you have learned and soon it becomes second nature to know much more about the Bible than you maybe thought possible.

In part 3 I will discuss some creative ways to use these “index cards” — or later, the website database whose data you customize — as much more than the rough equivalent of flash cards, but even if we used them just as flash cards, many people don’t realize how often we effectively use the Bible that way anyway. Let me explain…

We very often turn to a Bible passage because “something” directs us to that reference. The “something” could be a comment from a preacher or pastor. It could be a center-column cross reference, or a search result on our computer or phone’s Bible software.

For example, suppose you are listening to someone speak about faithful women and they put a slide up on the screen that says “Ruth 1:16-17”. Even if you don’t have Ruth 1 memorized word-for-word, if you have a decent chapter-level knowledge of the Bible you will likely know immediately that the reference is about Ruth declaring to Naomi her intention to come back to the land of Israel with Naomi.

In this example, we started with a reference (“Ruth 1:16-17”) and knew what was there.

In other cases, we start by knowing a story, and it’s nice to know where it is so we can read it word-for-word and make sure we get our detailed facts straight.

For example, suppose that we are trying to think of faithful women. Maybe Ruth comes to mind, but since there’s a book named after her we can probably find her story without much effort. But maybe Rahab comes to mind as well, and knowing that she is cited as an example of faith in James 2 simplifies the process of finding her story.

So in the next post (part 3) I will talk about using our hypothetical (or real) index cards as flash cards, but in a way that I think is much wiser than using them as simple as normal flash cards.

We’re going to do Bible study the way that cows eat. Stay tuned…