Before the Storm

This past week, we had some pretty high winds in Tulsa where I live. One morning we woke up at 4:30 to the sound of the tornado sirens (I know, most places don't even have tornado sirens!) so my wife and I got up to check the TV and radio and see what was going on. Luckily and thank the Lord, we weren't in the path of it, but there were winds of 90mph and an EF2 tornado that nicked the Southeast corner of Tulsa and completely removed the roofs from several houses and buildings. The next morning around the same time we had more strong thunderstorms, but no tornadoes. Oklahoma is no stranger to vicious weather patterns, but that doesn't make it any less jarring to see pictures of semi trucks lying on their sides and inner rooms of buildings exposed to the sky. (Thankfully, to my knowledge nobody actually was injured by this tornado, which is basically a miracle in itself!)

I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and lived in that area until I was nine years old. I don't remember taking cover from any hurricanes during those years, but I was probably just lucky; anyone who doesn't know by now that very dangerous hurricanes hit the Gulf coast must have been living in a cave for the past few years. My mother, who spent her youth in New Orleans and Houston, has stories of hurricanes, including one that literally split a house in half so that there was a crack from floor to ceiling that you could see daylight through. High winds are nothing to play with!

These days we have weather-prediction equipment that can not only generally plot on a map exactly where tornadoes are when they are occurring, but they can tell you what time, to the minute, that you should take cover. People who are paying attention can know exactly what's going on, which is one reason why loss of life in tornadoes is a lot less now than it once was. But you've got to take proper steps to be safe. When a tornado hits, you don't want to be in a car. You don't want to be outside at all, but if you are outside, you want to be flat on the ground or preferably in a low area like a ditch, instead of in a vehicle. Preferably you want to be inside a building, but you don't want to be near windows that can implode on you; you want to be in an inner room with four walls and no windows. If you can, you want to install a storm shelter that's designed to withstand tornado-force winds. There are things you can do to prepare for stormy weather.

I had a dream about that last night. I don't often remember my dreams, and usually when I do, they're just laughable too-much-pizza-before-bed dreams. But occasionally I have a dream that I consider a spiritual dream, and I believe this one was. I won't go so far as to say it is prophetic; I'll leave that determination up to you. It doesn't seem prophetic to me, but maybe it is in your life. I'll just tell you about it and let you evaluate that for yourself.

In my dream, I was much younger: probably a teenager. We had two computers in the house, and there was a hurricane coming. I was trying to shut down Windows on the computers. (Remember that when I was a teenager, I had moved away from hurricane country, computers were much too expensive for most families to have more than one if they even had one, and Microsoft Windows had not been invented yet!) I always keep all of my computers turned on 24 hours a day; there's an ongoing debate about whether it is better for computers to remain powered up all the time (creating wear and tear on moving parts like fans) or to be turned off when they are not in use (creating a momentary spike in power to the components when the computer comes on), but I fall into the "leave it turned on so it can start being useful without having to boot up first" camp. When there is stormy weather, though, it's best to turn your computers off (and even disconnect them from the wall power if possible) to avoid damage from lightning or from multiple cycles if the power flickers on and off. That's what I was doing in my dream. One of the computers turned off just fine, but I was having a little trouble getting Windows to shut down on the other one; if you've ever tried to shut down an older computer, you may know what I mean. Sometimes Windows just doesn't want to give up and shut off! I needed to get this thing shut down and get into the little storm shelter, so finally I gave up and physically hit the power button (which sometimes is the only way you can get some installations of Windows to shut down). I headed toward the storm shelter, and that was the end of the dream.

Rough times invariably happen to each of us. Sometimes the "winds of change" blow a bit harder and a little more fiercely than we are comfortable with. If we are tuned into the voice of the Holy Spirit (which is what happens when you spend time in the Word of God, in prayer, in worship) God will be able to give you early warning when something is blowing up, like the man on TV who tells me when it's time to take cover from a tornado. And God will provide the shelter from the storm. But we also have a responsibility; it is our responsibility to take God's warning seriously and to prepare properly before the storm hits. Sometimes, like my first computer, those preparations may be easy. Sometimes, like my second computer, the preparations may get a little more tricky to carry out. And sometimes we may have to just cut the power and run for shelter. But you'll notice in my dream that the storm didn't hit while I was in the middle of my preparations. God knows how long it will take you to prepare for what's ahead, and He will send warning in plenty of time. Relax! Calm down. Do what needs to be done. God is your protection in your storm, and He's given you the perfect amount of time to get your house in order before the storm hits.

Velvet Elvis - Perspective Is Everything

I first heard of the "Emerging/Emergent Church Movement" several years ago. I had a kind of vague impression of it being some watered-down version of Christian teaching, some weird movement that probably wouldn't last long. As I remember it, the discussion centered around the idea that there was no "close" to the "sale", that potential converts were never told the true message of the Cross and never invited to become Christians. That whole discussion, which probably occurred on a Web site called Christdot (which more or less was reborn later as Theophiles) may be the reason why, when a good friend of mine recommended that I read Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith by Rob Bell, the author's name seemed familiar ("rang a bell," as it were... da-dump ching!).

Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith

By Rob Bell

Or it may be because a different friend of mine was telling me about the NOOMA videos around the same time. Whatever the reason, I had never actually read any of Rob Bell's books. But when my friend tweeted a Rob Bell quote and I retweeted it, he recommended that I read the book myself.

The book is a great read. Bell says things using regular vocabulary and phrasing that people use in their day-to-day lives. He doesn't use a lot of Theological words like "substitutional atonement," and indeed, Velvet Elvis isn't a textbook of systematic Theology. It's more like a suggestion of a different way of looking at your relationship with God. And it's not a textbook about how to initiate a relationship with God! If you aren't a Christian, the book isn't a good way to find out how to become one. But if you already are a Christian, it might be the kind of thing that inspires you to think anew about what your relationship with God really means.

The title of the book refers to an element of American pop culture that is pretty ubiquitous: paintings of Elvis Presley that are painted on black velvet. Bell apparently has one in his basement. The idea is that no painter would dare say that his own art is the pinnacle of creativity and nobody else need ever paint anything; creativity continues on. Then Bell applies the same concept to Theology; it is the product not only of the specific words written in the Bible, but also of thousands of years of discussion of what those words signify. No generation has Theology sewed up; each generation has to figure out not only what the Scriptures mean, but what they mean right now, to people in the current day and age. It's a quite fluid way of looking at Theology, and that relaxed, accepting attitude is probably what's gotten Bell criticized with such fervor over the past few years.

Bell likes to keep things sort of open-ended. His goal is not to tell you what the truth is, as much as to start and facilitate a conversation about what the truth is, and see what conclusions naturally arise from that discussion. A physical book is pretty much a one-way street, of course, but Bell's writing is such that you do intellectually and emotionally interact with the text. Facts are presented, for sure, but he never seems to come to a place where he says, THIS is what I'm getting at. He makes his points, but he doesn't make them rigid. He explains this in the first "movement" of the book (there are no boring, ordinary "chapters", but there are seven hip, fresh "movements" which look just like chapters if you, like me, are not hip and fresh) where he compares Theology to either a trampoline or a brick wall. If you build your personal Theology like a brick wall, with each component very rigid and with no room for modification and change, and then one brick in your wall comes into question, then your wall is weakened or destroyed. But if you build some elasticity into your Theological outlook, like the springs on a trampoline, not only will your ideas be able to withstand changes better, but discussing them will just be more fun! Like jumping on a trampoline. Not a bad analogy!

But people don't like to hear stuff like that. People like to think that there are always pat, set in stone, easily-understandable answers to every question. Some Theologians like to think that every bit of the Bible can be figured out and understood. I would like to submit that the idea that we can eventually figure out everything about the Bible, get everything pat and straight, is intellectual arrogance. In fact, I'd have to say that the idea that we can ever understand everything about even any one single part of the Bible is laughable. If Jesus is, as the Bible says, the "Word", and if Jesus is also the incarnation of God, then saying we can truly get the Bible all wrapped up intellectually is saying that we think we can wrap our brains around God Himself. I'd say a little humility is called for there.

We read in history that in the early years of the 20th Century, people started to see the incredible discoveries of science, and started to believe that science could figure out everything. Eventually we would know it all, or at least somebody would know it all. Everything has an explanation that can be studied and discovered. People bought into it, and several generations later, it is part of our basic thought processes in the West. No matter how many weird moans the floating ghost makes, Scooby-Doo always pulls off his mask and we find out he was Mr. Smith the Gardener all along.

There is no room for the supernatural in this kind of science, which explains why it sometimes cooks up oddly unlikely theories like the one that says that the universe created itself and all life appeared randomly, instead of the more logical idea that complex systems and living beings were planned and created by an intelligent creator. This isn't science: this is arrogance. Theology that is unwilling to listen to ideas that are not framed in the terms and thought frameworks that have been used before is, likewise, arrogant Theology. (I'm not against Theology and I'm not against science; I enjoy both. But when either excludes facts to arrive at their own version of the truth, they cease being the truth and start being presumptuous.)

Today I was reading this response to the book, and I began to wonder if Pastor Abendroth had read the same book that I read. The article said that Bell said things that I don't see in the book, even when Abendroth gives a page number. I mean, I can find the part he is talking about, but there seems to be a lot of point-missing going on. For example, Abendroth says that Bell "writes off the virgin birth of Jesus as non-essential," but that's not how I read those pages. Bell is making a point about how your Theology can't be so rigid that if one part of it is proven false, the whole thing comes crashing down. Could he have thought of a better example than the virgin birth thing? Maybe. Maybe he could have told the true story about how once upon a time, the Church insisted that the Sun revolved around the Earth, and based that insistence on something in the Scripture. When observational science said that things were actually the other way around and the Earth actually travels around the Sun, people's faith in God was challenged because they had been taught a flawed Theology. Would using that example rather than the virgin birth thing have deflected criticism? Maybe or maybe not, but at least it might have made Bell a tougher target for criticism. Rob Bell wasn't saying that the virgin birth is inessential; in fact, he wasn't actually taking a side on that at all in that passage. He was simply making the point that if you are rigid in your beliefs and unable to consider different ideas, you're setting yourself up for a big fall at some point. It's a hypothetical example that he's using to illustrate his "trampoline springs" analogy, not a statement of his doctrinal position on Hebrew words vs. their Septuagint equivalents.

The "virgin birth thing" I'm talking about is actually an old argument about the word "virgin" in the story of the birth of Jesus. The word in Matthew 1:23 means what we mean when we say "virgin," but the source Scripture in Isaiah 7:14 uses a word which some have said means only "young woman" with no connotation of sexual experience. This has been a point of contention between liberal and conservative Bible scholars for many years, and in fact was one reason that, many years ago, some conservative Theologians rejected the Revised Standard Version translation when it came out. My guess is that when Pastor Abendroth saw the passage about the virgin birth, he automatically snapped into "this person denies the virgin birth" mode, and suddenly turned his listening ears off and assumed a connotation for the words on the page that is not there. After all, there's nothing between the lines when you get a book; you can read in whatever you want and it can be tough to dispute you.

Part of the strength of Bell's thought processes is the fluid, let's-start-from-the-ground-up writing style he has. That is also its weakness, because Bell invites each of us to look at the Bible that way. That's a wonderful approach for someone with a strong background in the Scriptures, and ideally much of his audience would be that sort of person. Bell has quite a lengthy discussion in the book about how Jewish children in Jesus' day memorized huge hunks of Scripture in school; the entire Torah (Genesis-Deuteronomy) and, in the case of the quicker studies, the entire Hebrew Bible, all the way to Malachi. That is the kind of person who is able to figure out that when Bell says that our message will get through to more people if we love them without an agenda (the agenda being to turn them into Christians just like us), he's not saying that people don't need to become Christians; he's saying that if we walk up to them with sales pitch in hand, we will push them away. Anyone who has ever had a street preacher yelling in his ear (like I had a few days ago) will understand this. (Apparently Pastor Abendroth didn't see it that way. According to him, Rob Bell not only thinks that the virgin birth is an unnecessary Theological concept, but that salvation is as well. Again, I don't see it in the black words on the white pages.)

The reason I disagree with Pastor Abendroth on those two points is that the chapter mentioning the virgin birth is not about the virgin birth. The chapter talking about the notches-in-my-belt-style evangelism-with-an-agenda isn't about salvation. But because those things are mentioned, people seem to assume that those chapters should say certain things, and when they say different things, there must be something wrong with the book. It's like reading a book about the boyhood of Abraham Lincoln and then complaining that it's light on information about his years in the White House. That's because it's not what the book is about!

I wonder if the modern Christian, who in most cases hasn't even read every word of the Bible, much less memorized them, has the kind of balance needed to understand those shades of meaning and logic present in books like Bell's. When you're in a physical room having a discussion with someone and the conversation begins to go off track because they misunderstood an illustration you are making, you can correct course and clarify what you were getting at. That luxury isn't present in the printed word. It could be that a weakness of Velvet Elvis is that it is too much like a conversation, except without the option of clarification when necessary.

Several years ago, I read another recent very conversational book about the Christian life, Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. I enjoyed it a lot, but I left it feeling vaguely unsettled, and after reading Velvet Elvis, I think I know why. Miller seems intent on getting someone to tell him the answers to his questions about spiritual things. Bell, on the other hand, seems content to leave some things a bit mysterious... ambiguous... mystical. I think there are certain things that the Word of God does leave ambiguous and mysterious. If we Christians were content to leave those kinds of things hwo God left them, we wouldn't almost come to blows whenever a six-literal-days creationist and a thousand-years-are-like-a-day creationist discuss the opening chapters of Genesis. God didn't inspire a history or science textbook; God inspired a spiritual book expressing His love for us. He left the mystery in, and when we take a hard line on issues that God left open, we become divisive.

I grew up in the 70s, during what was called the Charismatic movement (funny, there's that "movement" word again). Charismatics believe things that some mainstream Christians thought were borderline heresy. We prayed for sick people, expecting that God would heal them. We raised our hands to God during worship services. We used brief, catchy, repetitive, pop music-influenced songs in our worship services, and gave hymns a back seat or no seat at all. We spoke in tongues. We didn't mind too much if people dressed casually for church. The Charismatic movement spread rapidly, and since then many of the practices from that time (rock-style worship services, for example, or raising hands during worship, or casual dress for church, etc.) have been adopted by many mainstream churches as well. Those things seemed revolutionary back then, but much of it is commonplace today. In retrospect, it seems obvious. The Christian rock albums that people burned as heresy back then seem tame and boring next to the music you hear on most Christian radio stations today. I just wonder if some of these "emerging" concepts that have caused so much controversy in the past five years might, ten or fifteen years from now, seem glaringly obvious. I've heard that the "emerging" movement has been losing steam lately, faltering because of lack of strong leadership or whatever, but I see some of the concepts of reaching out to people in love present in my own "non-emerging" church. There may be some bathwater there, but I definitely see a baby splashing around, too. Hopefully we as the body of Christ can get rid of the right one and keep the other!

Heaven

Last night I had a dream. In my dream, I was hanging out with an old friend from high school, and he had some photos of friends of ours from back in the day. The pictures were in black and white, but as I looked at each one, it turned into a color picture before my eyes. When I looked away, it would turn back to a black and white picture. I woke up feeling sort of wistful, almost nostalgic. I miss those kids I grew up with.

Of course, they're not kids any more. They're all either pushing 40 like I am, or past it. I know why I had that dream: it's all the fault of Facebook. On Facebook I've connected back up with people I knew during many phases of my life... in high school, in college, and several people from seasons after that (and even one guy from grade school!) I've gotten to see current pictures of them and their spouses and children. It's amazing to see the things we still have in common, and even stranger to realize that in many cases, we have more in common now than we did then!

It's weird sometimes, too, when those worlds collide... when someone I know from high school has a discussion with someone I just met last year, or when someone I met at a previous job turns out to know someone I met at my current job (this happened recently). The illusion that all of these people are somehow together in the same place is a strange one. The fact is that these people are scattered all over the country, and in a few cases, the world. I'm in Oklahoma now; many of my friends from high school are still in Louisiana, but some are in Arkansas, Virginia, Texas, and other places. My high school youth pastor is now a missionary to Africa. My friends from college are even more scattered, since their places of origin were more varied to start with. Last year we switched from our long-time church; even our friends from that period are still at that church or scattered at various churches around town. But by some miraculous circumstance, I can find all of those people in one "place" on the Internet. There's never been a time in history where people all across the face of the globe could feel connected to each other like they can with a social networking site like Facebook.

I have a theory that human beings have something inside them that longs for Heaven. When we feel nostalgic for something in the past, we're longing for Heaven (because when we think back truthfully to that time, it's never as happy of a time as it seems like in our nostalgia). And Heaven is a place where hopefully all my friends and I will be one day! Facebook is far from being Heaven, of course... there are bugs and privacy concerns, and the purpose of Facebook is basically to gather enough information about you to target advertising your way. But being with your spiritual family is part of what will be wonderful about Heaven. Being in close fellowship with the other saints of God... and saints who are once and for all freed from the temptation to sin! ...that will be amazing. I can't wait!

NLT Bible Contest Entry #2

NLT Life Application Study Bible - Updated Edition Hardcover

So, since you are allowed to enter the NLT Bible Contest more than once if you like, I decided to throw another entry into the hat. (Here's my first entry.)

Here's the passage I chose this time:

1 John 4:7-10
Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

And here's what I had to say about it:

When I read the verses from 1 John 4:7-10 in the New Living Translation, it got me thinking about the nature of love, and the nature of God. Love, according to the passage, is sacrificial; God sent us something precious because He loved us. God's love is central to His nature. God and Love cannot be separated: "God IS love." Love flows out of Him to us, and is ours to receive.

The passage also says to me that you can't know God without becoming more like Him. If you don't become more like God - if you don't love - then you really don't know Him. You can't truly know God without becoming a lover like He is.

The passage says to me that love gives without being given to first; God loved us before we loved Him. But love gives with a purpose: God gave His gift to show us His love, to provide eternal life for us, and to take away our sins. It seems almost impossible to live up to that kind of love... but the passage not only says that we can, but that we should! Let's keep loving one another with the love that flows to and through us from God!

Deleted Scenes

A few nights ago we had just finished watching a DVD, including some fun "bonus materials", when I went into my room to do my daily Bible reading. I was a day behind, so with six chapters a day I had chapters 19-24 of 2 Samuel (the last in the book) to read. Chapter 19 is David's return to Jerusalem after the long narrative of how he was almost dethroned by his own son Absalom, and chapter 20 describes one final brief rebellion after that (this rebellion was stamped out pretty quickly). It's pretty clear that things are winding down, and at the end of chapter 20 there is a clear note of finality in the story.

After that, though, there are four more very interesting chapters; they take place totally out of the time line of the story, and seem to have only a very tenuous connection with the continuing narrative. The first part is a story of David executing some of Saul's descendants in order to stop a drought. This incident could possibly be the reason Shimei cursed David for spilling "the blood of the house of Saul" in chapter 16, and if that is a true assumption, then this happened much earlier than it is reported in the story. Regardless of the exact order of events, it seems pretty clear that chapter 21 is not chronologically taking place after chapter 20.

The last few verses of chapter 21 report some anecdotes about some of David's soldiers, specifically about them beating Philistines in battle. Chapter 22 is a psalm that David wrote (actually, it is pretty much duplicated in Psalm 18) "...on the day the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul." Saul's death is reported in the final chapter of first Samuel, so clearly, again, outside of the timeline of the book.

Chapter 23 begins with another psalm, "the last words of David." David's death does not occur until the second chapter of the next book, 1 Kings. It ends with the exploits of David's "mighty men," including a list of their names. The last name is "Uriah the Hittite," and David had made quite sure that Uriah was stone dead way back in chapter 11. Only chapter 24 appears to me to be within the main flow of the narrative; David takes a census of his fighting men, angering God and causing a plague which kills a whole bunch of Israelites.

So I was reading this and thinking, why is all of this stuff stuck at the end of this book instead of right in the narrative? Certainly 2 Samuel sometimes doubles back on itself, telling part of a story and then cutting away to another mini-story happening somewhere else and then returning to where it started, but this stuff seems almost random at the end. Then I realized something. The author of 2 Samuel invented the Deleted Scene! Who knew that one of the most popular features on DVDs was actually invented a thousand years before the birth of Christ?

;)

Study Bible Junkie

On Easter of 2005, everybody in my family got new Bibles.

My baby girl wasn't born yet, but my little boy was almost 5 years old at the time, and we decided that it was high time he had his own kid Bible.

NIrV Super Heroes Bible

My wife needed a new Bible too, and I had my eye on an ESV Bible (I had been a long-time NIV reader, but I wanted to switch to the more literal translation - and I've never looked back!) I had done some looking around and I had discovered what I believed (and still believe) is the most awesome kid Bible ever created: the NIrV Super Heroes Bible. Take a look at that cover: that's Moses parting the Red Sea! The Bible has forty of those incredible, comic book style illustrations of Bible "Super Heroes" like Elijah, John the Baptist, David (and Goliath), and even some of the awesome female super heroes of the Bible like Mary, Queen Esther, Deborah, and Ruth. The pictures are filled with action and humor, but are never irreverent. Perfect for getting a kid interested in looking at what's in their Bible! There are also over 200 profiles of Bible characters, written at a kid's level of understanding. (The ironic thing about these well-written profiles is that the vocabulary and sentence structure are actually harder than the NIrV translation itself is!) We bought this Bible for him partly because the translation is very easy for beginning readers. When he turns ten next week, we might think about upgrading to an NIV.

My wife Cathy picked out an NIV Life Application Study Bible.

NIV Life Application Study Bible

It has book introductions, maps, all of the regular Study Bible stuff, but the text notes on each page are focused on "How does this really apply to me? What does this mean to my life?" She actually had a tough time concentrating on the message in Church for a while because she would get distracted by the study notes! (This is the main reason I still to this day bring a more plain-jane Bible to church with me!)

That was my first brush with a study Bible... well, as a high school student I owned a New King James "Open Bible" (they are out of print now) and I really loved it a lot. As I remember, I gave it away to someone that I felt needed it more than I did. I really wanted a study Bible in the ESV translation, but at the time there really wasn't one! I went with a small ESV Compact Trutone Bible which is almost the opposite... no study notes, no book introductions, no cross-references. It actually served me very well for many years, but I still wanted a study Bible in the ESV translation.

The first ESV-translation study Bible I remember hearing about was the ESV Reformation Study Bible. I actually checked a copy out from the library, and enjoyed it quite a bit, but I was a little bit nervous that it is self-classified as a "reformation" Bible; I was concerned that the notes might be slanted toward "reformed" Theology, and I wasn't quite comfortable with joining that camp whole hog. I wouldn't at all mind having this Bible in my library, but it wasn't really "the one" that I wanted to have for my primary study Bible.

The next ESV study Bible that came out was The ESV Literary Study Bible.

The ESV Literary Study Bible

. This Bible focuses on the Bible as a book, a work of literature. This might trigger red flags for some, but really, it shouldn't. The Bible is a book. It's got characters, settings, and plots. It's also got poetry, historical accounts, and letters. The Bible is a book consisting of dozens of genres of writing, and it is valuable to understand those genres in order to truly understand the Bible. I was very interested in this Bible, but I really wanted something as my primary study Bible that would explain things like historical details, settings, that sort of thing, and this Bible focuses on the literary aspects. I wanted something that I could approach at a more basic level. I still want to pick one of these up, but it will be a future purchase.

Finally, I heard that The ESV Study Bible was coming out!

ESV Study Bible

This was the Bible I was looking for. It didn't look to be focused on one slant on the Bible to the exclusion of others, although it was conservative in its point of view. It had book introductions, study notes, cross-references, and articles about Bible topics. I picked up a sample of the Gospel of John from Mardel and read it straight through... I was hooked! I preordered a copy and picked it up on the day of release. It's my all-time favorite Bible! One of my first projects was to make my way through the book of Revelation, and I came away understanding it in a way I never understood it before. I started to see it as almost symphonic in nature, with a prelude, movements and interludes, loud sections and quiet sections. I'm a trained musical composer, so the fact that the ESV Study Bible caused me to see the Word in a way that made sense to me as a musician was a big deal!

When I decided at the beginning of this year to read my way through the whole Bible, cover to cover, of course my ESV Study Bible was at the center of the whole idea. But I never anticipated just how much having study notes to give me context and background would really help me to engage the Scripture. Reading the Bible isn't like reading the latest Tom Clancy novel; the Bible is a book that was written thousands of years ago in a different language in an ancient culture. There are things that would have been obvious to a Hebrew reader on 1,000 B.C. that just aren't obvious to an American in the year 2010. Some historical and geographical context is critical to really understanding what's going on.

I was so excited about the things I was learning in the Bible that I wanted more! I checked out The NIV Study Bible from the library to give it a test drive.

NIV Study Bible

I added it into my study times, reading the ESV text, then the ESVSB notes, then the NIVSB notes. To my surprise, the NIVSB was teaching me additional things that the ESVSB wasn't getting at! Occasionally there are notes in the two that disagree on some small point, but in general, the two simply have a different focus. This seems to be the case with study Bibles; no reference work will tell you everything there is to know about the text, so consulting different sources will often give you more insight into the passage. I bought one from CBD one day when they had it on sale (sometimes they announce one-day sales from their Facebook page), and now my Bible reading time includes two study Bibles!

A few weeks after I added the NIV Study Bible to the mix, I got a sale paper from Lifeway Christian Stores which led to another study Bible purchase. I had seen a video on the Internet talking about the Apologetics Study Bible for Students (you can view the video at that link if you like) and I was pretty impressed with the idea that a study Bible would have its focus specifically on explaining things about the Bible that people have a hard time understanding. I had seen the Web site for the (non-"Student") Apologetics Study Bible already, and so when I saw it on sale in the Lifeway flyer, I knew I needed to pick it up.

Apologetics Study Bible

The weekend of the sale at Lifeway was kind of crazy; it was a "spring sale" on the literal first day of spring, but the day before we had a freak snowstorm and there was like six inches of snow on the ground! I went anyway and picked up another new study Bible for less than twenty bucks, and it's been great. I did not try to add it into my daily Bible reading regimen (two is plenty... I could spend hours just reading notes and following links in those two study Bibles!), but this won't be my last trip through the Bible. The Apologetics Study Bible will probably be my companion on the trip next year, or the next, or the next! It was a good purchase anyway; we didn't have a full copy of the Holman Christian Standard Bible in the house yet, so it was another translation to add to our collection. The Holman translation is a good, solid translation, too... it's probably my second favorite now, next to the ESV. The NIV still holds a place in my heart, though; it's probably my #3 favorite translation.

Now that I've become a bonafide Study Bible Junkie, I have my eye on some other study Bibles.

NIV Archaeological Study Bible

I still want to pick up that ESV Literary Study Bible that I mentioned above; my plan is to buy one of those for myself as a reward for making it all the way through the Bible this year (or maybe I'll ask for it for Christmas!) A few years ago I spied an NIV Archaeological Study Bible that someone had accidentally left on the seat at church, and I leafed through it. It has full-color photographs to support the information it contains about the archaeology of the Bible. It's a beautiful Bible; although I haven't looked at one long enough to be able to report on the quality of the in-text notes, it's another one that I'd like to pick up a copy of sometime.

I've had an interest in the New Living Translation for a while, and the best way to satisfy my desire to have that translation and also to get a new study Bible would be to pick up a copy of the NLT Study Bible!

NLT Study Bible

The New Living Translation is kind of the child of the Living Bible Paraphrase from the 70s; the NLT is supposed to be a Bible with the clarity of language of the paraphrase, but with the precision of a new translation from the original languages (the paraphrase is a rewording of the text of the American Standard Version, with no reference to the original language texts. Kind of like "The Message" except from the 70s). I've briefly read some passages from the NLT and I liked what I saw; my concern is fidelity to the source texts. I'll just have to spend some time reading it to have a verdict on that. I hope to pick up this sampler of Genesis sometime and spend some time with it; it helped me get the feel of the ESV Study Bible to read a sample, so maybe that will help me with this one too! (If you don't mind reading on your computer, or if you have a Kindle or similar reader that can handle PDF files, you can download that Genesis sampler here.)

In my research about study Bibles, I ran across the NRSV New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha. I haven't actually seen one, so I'll probably want to spend some time browsing it before I buy (I expect a slightly liberal bias), but it sounds like a well-respected reference work. Plus, I would really like to have a copy of the Apocrypha in my library, again for reference. ("Bel and the Dragon?" What's that? And who is this "Susanna?" Oh wait, didn't she come from Alabama with a banjo on her knee?) Of course, I might just wuss out on that one and pick up the Apocrypha parts by themselves instead.

The Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible sounds pretty cool for in-depth study. I would probably pick it up in the New American Standard version; I already have a beautiful NASB which I carry to church, but there is certainly no shortage of KJV Bibles around here, so since those appear to be the only two choices, probably I'd go with the NASB. I haven't seen one of these Bibles yet, though, so I can't recommend it (same with the Oxford one, and others in this post that it's clear I haven't spent time using).

If you are interested in study Bibles, CBD has a Study Bible Store that you could use for doing a little bit of research on what's out there. I got my NIV Study Bible and my Apologetics Study Bible each on sale for about $20 apiece; watch for sales and you can sometimes get a fabulous deal, particularly if you're cool with hardback copies (I prefer them, actually; they seem to do better on shelves, they're generally a little cheaper, and the covers have some personality to them!) For a deal from CBD, check the Slightly Imperfect Study Bibles store. That doesn't mean study Bibles with faulty Theology, or missing the book of Esther, or anything like that; it just means Bibles with maybe something wrong with the cover or some other minor manufacturing defect. Copies with a flaw that does not detract from their usefulness, but that makes them impossible to sell as though they were new. You can often get them for 40-50% off regular price, and sometimes never even notice the flaw.

There are tons of great Bibles out there, in zillions of translations, styles, designs, colors, and sizes. I've got probably a dozen different English translations in my library (and a couple in languages I don't even speak!), three study Bibles so far, and even one with the events of the entire Bible in chronological order. I even have a metal Bible! (I haven't picked up a waterproof Bible quite yet... then again, I don't read the Bible in the swimming pool!) But all the Bibles in the World can't help you a bit if you don't read them. When we picked out those Bibles five Easters ago, my goal was to find a Bible for each of us that we would like enough to open them up and read them. Pick a version and Bible that you enjoy reading, and get into the Word. These great study Bibles can help, but if cartoons of Bible characters are what it takes to get you to open up The Book, go with the cartoons. Just get into the Bible!


Useful Links
ESV Study Bible
ESV Literary Study Bible
ESV Reformation Study Bible
ESV MacArthur Study Bible
NLT Study Bible
HCSB Apologetics Study Bible

ESV translation
NIV translation
NIrV translation
HCSB translation
NLT translation

What It's All About

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