What read you , my Lord? Words, words, words

collinsmom came home early this evening. I was still house cleaning. Afterwards, we went out to Arby's, where I told her the source of my bummedness.

She was bummed, too. In her case, she bombed an Inductive Bible Study paper. Just couldn't understand what the professor wanted. So, I've gone over the stuff he wants and tried to explain it to her, since this is my stock in trade. She thinks I'm a better teacher (or at least, a better explainer) than the professor.

And, hey, having helped her with the book, I could probably do a whole sermon series from Amos.

What amazes me is the number of people who see the Bible as a disjointed collection of gnomic texts. The Inductive Bible Study method is trying to teach them how to read each book of the Bible as a whole, and many of them struggle with this approach. I didn't care much for the classes I had thirty years ago, but that was because I already approached the Bible in a literary manner (rather than as a bunch of preaching texts). This is partly due to my training in English, but probably mostly due to the fact that I came to the Bible as a young adult, with no particular devotional experience. I just started reading it for the sense of it.