STUDYING THE BIBLE IS LIKE SURFING THE INTERNET

I attended our church’s men’s Bible study meeting this morning. We Presbyterians are quite efficient: 30 minutes of Bible study, 10 minutes of sharing, 20 minutes of prayer, and by 7:30am we are all out of the door and on to the rest of our days.

The group has been making our way through the book of Hebrews, and as we studied this morning I couldn’t help but draw a parallel between reading the Bible and surfing the Internet. When you surf the net, as you’re reading something, there’s a link on a name so you can get more detail, there are related stories on the side panel, and the format of similar contented pages is similar.

And so it is with the Bible. We constantly flipped back and forth to read the quoted Old Testament passages in their original context. We noticed parallels between the author’s main points and the main points of another New Testament book. We made note of repeated words and phrases, and saw in the parallel structure more of what was really being said.

For someone who gets a lot of information off the Internet, studying the Bible this morning with other men from the church suited me just fine. I look forward to doing more “surfing,” “double-clicking,” and “scrolling” next week!