I make no bones about being a big fan of higher education in some way, shape, or form. The joke I make with students is that too many people go to college these days watering down it's value... but you better go to college!
This is more about my opinions on education and less about credentials or pretty pieces of paper. You see, even when I was taking those "useless, compulsory classes" in college, I tried to get something out of them. One credit all engineers had to take was in either philosophy or religion. If you guessed I'd take a religion class, you'd be wrong. Instead, I took "The Ethics of Morality" which was incredibly interesting. It taught me to attempt to see "right" and "wrong" from different perspectives, striving to understand the positions of those I disagreed with so I could challenge my own views and either affirm them or change them. It was useful as long as my heart was in it. It was something that could have easily been a check-box class, but was able to teach me something meaningful that I apply to my life regularly simply due to the attitude I had when I sat at my desk.
Our relationships with the Bible and scriptural knowledge is much the same way. As an adolescent in a contemporary, more charismatic church, scripture memorization was pushed constantly. Don't get me wrong; scripture memorization has its benefits, but it didn't take long in Bible study before you could see who had the Bible memorized vs who has really studied to understand the scriptures. Some people had simply checked a box while others had really sought to understand what they were reading.
In our next chapter in the book of Ezra, we see Ezra finally arriving in Jerusalem. In the first verses of this chapter, Ezra's knowledge and skill in the scriptures is praised along with the fact that those around Ezra could tell he walked with God. When describing his on-going relationship to Biblical study, we read this...
Now Ezra had determined in his heart to study the law of the Lord, obey it, and teach its statutes and ordinances in Israel. (Ezra 7:10)
It wasn't enough for Ezra to just "know the Bible"; Ezra had to have a functioning, working knowledge of God's laws and nature so that he could (1) teach it to the rest of God's people and (2) put it into practice. Our calling, as those who minister to our peers and each other, is to have the same type of working knowledge in the Word.
There is a movement in modern, born-again Christianity that likes to treat the Bible as more of a set of generalized concepts emphasizing love and acceptance, but it overlooks the importance of really understanding the scriptures in their entirety. It's attractive to water down the truth because sometimes the truth puts us in challenging or uncomfortable situations. Sometimes it forces us to feel convicted or to take on a new role that may seem more difficult than just passively living as a sort-of "spiritual hippy" just reciting Christian-themed platitudes to the world around us.
When we look at the Bible, the challenge should be to truly understand the gospel. Meditate on God's Word and see what he is revealing to you. We all have a calling, delivered by Christ himself, to have a working knowledge of his teachings so we can live and speak as someone who walks with God; someone who is as easily recognizable as a man/woman of God as Ezra was! When we go through our devotions or study, let's do it in a way that we're doing more than just "going through the motions". If we really put our heart into it, God may speak to us in ways and places that we didn't originally expect.
DAILY PRAYER A Prayer for Knowledge
God of everything known and unknown, help us to understand the things you reveal to us through the scriptures and those things you have chosen to reveal only when the timing is right. Give us the patience to work through difficult truths in the Bible and a natural curiosity to see where your truth reveals itself in the goods and bads of the world which surrounds us. Give us strength as we build those around us up and assist them in their own spiritual journeys and place influences in our lives where our relationships with you can be nurtured and grown. We crave your wisdom and your understanding. Thank you for all you have shown us and those glories which are yet to be revealed.
All worship and praise be to your Holy name, Amen.
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