Memorize the Bible

I think of cows as “chewing the cud” to digest their food. That’s a layman’s term useful for urban dwellers like me. I’m sure that there is a better, more technically correct way to describe it, but all I know is that cows chew their food more than once before digesting it, and in principle I think one method for EFFECTIVE Bible study on index cards or their computer equivalents is “chewing the cud” with a few chapters every day rather than using the cards or their equivalents as mere flash cards.

To illustrate this, let’s first consider using our real or imagined index cards from part 1 as mere flash cards. To refresh, we have 18 index cards for 9 chapters in this thought experiment. We have 2 cards for each chapter — one with the reference on one side and our “title” on the other, one with our “title” on one side and our “summary” on the other.

Shuffle the cards and don’t worry about which side is up, and maybe place the cards in such a way that you can’t see the top of the top card.

Now grab the top card and look at the side that’s on top.

There’s a 1 in 4 chance that your card shows a reference, such as “James 5”. Using this as a flash card, I want you to try to remember your title, in this case maybe “Riches; Prayer”.

There’s a 1 in 4 chance that your card shows your short summary, in which case I also want you to try to remember your title for that chapter.

And there’s a 2 in 4 chance (or 1 in 2 if you prefer) that your card shows your title, in which case you don’t know if the other side shows a reference or your short summary. So try to remember both!

No matter what kind of card side you picked at random, check your answer when you’re done, then move on to the next card.

You get the idea, and can repeat this with fresh shuffles and use these cards as traditional flash cards.

But I think the real value comes from “chewing the cud” with just a couple of chapters. I will talk about this as if we’re working on only 2 chapters with index cards but in reality what I have done for years is based on working with 8 chapters a day from the whole Bible.

For the sake of discussion, let’s assume that you randomly pick Ruth 2 and James 2 for the day.

I want you to review your titles and summaries for these two chapters in the morning, but then keep “chewing the cud” with them throughout the day. If you have a few seconds sometime during the day, pull one of the cards out of your pocket and work on it a bit more. I do this when waiting in line for the register at the supermarket, when eating lunch at work, and at other times. In other words, I sneak a couple of seconds of Bible review into my day several times a day, and even if I only look at the “index card” for a couple of seconds, I am spending time thinking about it.

I do a variety of things such as trying to think about other chapters that are similar. I try to picture the events on a map, and if I have a Bible map handy I actually look it up. I imagine someone coming up to me and saying something like: “Dean, do you know where that story is about a rich man and a poor man both walking into church?” I then I picture the answer as James 2. By thinking about my daily chapters in a variety of ways I’m repeatedly interacting with them and that means there’s a good chance I will remember them later when I really need them.

Even better, one of the things I like to do is to compare my daily chapters with one another. Do it yourself right now. Take my summaries for Ruth 2 and James 2 — reproduced below — and look for connections or echoes.

Dean’s Ruth 2 summary — Boaz a kinsman of Elimelech. Ruth gleans in field, is noticed by Boaz. Boaz tells Ruth not to glean in another field, provides kindly for her, having servants pull some grain from bundles for her. Ruth reports to Naomi what happened.

Dean’s James 2 summary — No favoritism to wealthy. God chose poor of world as heirs of the kingdom. Royal law: love neighbor as self. If keep whole law except 1, guilty of all. Mercy triumphs over judgment. Faith dead if no works, consider Abraham & Rahab.

Based on just the summaries, you might come up with a couple of connections, but if you think just a little bit deeper you might notice that James 2 builds on the last verse of James 1 (“Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” NASB) by talking about how we should treat poor people, and you might notice that this is exactly what the wonderful Boaz does with regard to poor and widowed Ruth. In other words, Boaz’s actions towards Ruth in Ruth chapter 2 is a great illustration of the exhortation in James chapter 2.

But whether you notice this or other connections or even nothing at all, either way you are interacting with the chapters rather than merely reading them. You’re still learning.

Once the website gets built, the intent is to allow you to review your own titles and summaries and other potential items about each chapter as flash cards if that’s what you want to do, but in particular it will encourage you to “chew the cud” on just a few chapters a day in such a way that you can gain a good working knowledge of the entire Bible within a reasonable period of time.

In Monday’s final post in this series, we’ll move on from “titles” and “summaries” for each chapter to talk about the other kinds of items about each chapter that you might want to learn, especially for more advanced students of the Bible or at least those who want more understanding about some chapters.

So stay tuned for part 4 on Monday, Lord willing.