Be Careful Little Eyes How You Study

I am big on Bible study. I think it is important, perhaps even essential to the Christian.  I do think it is important to use caution in how you approach studying it, however.  In part, there can be a danger in having an unbalanced view of God's word, or a tendency to know a few trees well, but miss the forest.  Doug Wilson was correct today in his post "As Somebody Somewhere Said..."

Wilson writes, "The only way to learn the Bible the way you should is to read and reread it. This brings us back to the point made earlier: proper Bible study must be preceded by reading. After you are familiar with the context of Scripture, you will be able to build on your knowledge through more specialized study methods. But until you have that familiarity, such study methods should be scrupulously avoided. Until you have the proper foundation, do not memorize any Bible verses. This may seem odd to some of you and sacrilegious to others. Does not the Bible say, 'I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you' (Ps. 119:11).

"Yes, we are to store God's word in our hearts. Yes, it will keep us from sin. But we are not instructed to cram His Word into our hearts sideways or upside down. God's Word cannot be properly hidden in our hearts when it is misunderstood. And it cannot be understood apart from context."

If you have never read your Bible through (perhaps even a few times), you may want to set to work on that task before you sign up for the next round of memory madness or read the next Christian living book. 

(EDIT: Based on an online conversation with my friend Amy, I think it may be more appropriate to stress both scripture memorization AND getting the grand story of scripture. So perhaps it is better to say "sign up for memory madness, but really seek to read through the whole Bible so you can see the big picture").