If fun is the goal of your bible study, you will get nothing out of the study except fun. You will forget everything you “learned” and you will not benefit.
Nothing has to be fun in order to be productive.
I have been to a few bible studies where it became very apparent that the purpose of the “study” was socialization. We “studied” for about a half-hour and followed it up with two and a half hours of socializing. Now there is nothing wrong with socialization, but that is not the purpose of something called a study.
The goal and purpose of a bible study is to increase the knowledge of the Bible. Sometimes that is enjoyable and sometimes it is not. It does not matter either way. This is because study and training, even the study of biblical subjects, can be likened to your training in the gym. Sometimes it is fun to train and other times it is a drag. Sometimes you are motivated and the process is enjoyable, and other times training is simply focused work. At times you may have to spend most of your focus and energy just to maintain a moderate level of effort.
None of that matters. How you are feeling before, during, and after your study is irrelevant.
What matters is if you accomplished the goal you set or not. Did you complete the appropriate volume of work or not? Are you making progress towards your end-state goals or are you becoming stagnant?
The philosophy of liberalism teaches you that you are good just the way you are. The philosophy of the hardcore Christian should be one of constant improvement. Day in and day out you are taking steps towards your goal. No matter how small or insignificant those steps may seem, you are taking steps. That puts you miles ahead of the person who believes they are fine just the way they are. Those people have sat down and may never get back up to work towards their goals.
Productivity in the study of the Bible will never be limited based on the fun-ness of that specific activity.
You have to study hard enough to induce learning, and that is not always fun.
Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman talks about effort and learning in the podcast linked above. One of the most interesting things he notes is that when you are studying or trying to learn something new if you want to enter a period of time of aggressive, focused learning, you have to first walk through a barrier of mental discomfort. When you are first settling in to learn and are getting frustrated with the material, your brain releases epinephrine, which is also called adrenaline. This epinephrine release is what gives you that feeling of frustration and mental agitation.
But if you continue to press on and work through that feeling, you can enter a period of relative smoothness. It is not that your work suddenly becomes effortless, but you are no longer “out of the groove“, so to speak. You are in the groove and ready for efficient action.
Imagine that, in order to enter a state of hard focus, you must walk through that initial period of agitation and frustration.
And any human being who has attempted to learn something and has hit that wall of frustration knows that it is not fun.
But when it comes to our Bible study, we want everything to be all happy and fun and fine and dandy. But if our goal is results, mental improvement, and an increase of the knowledge of the Bible, we need to acknowledge that we will have to walk through those moments of frustration in order to get in the groove of working.
You have to train hard enough to induce muscle growth, and that is not always fun.
How does muscle growth relate to bible study? Here’s how:
Most people are familiar with the fact that if you want muscle growth in your body, you have to train hard enough to trigger the muscle growth process. In Exercise Physiology this is called the “stimulus threshold“. The basic idea is that you have to push to a certain level of effort in order to “flip on the light switch” of protein synthesis – otherwise known as muscle growth. And below this threshold, you will see very little, if any, muscle growth for your alleged “efforts“.
I postulate to you that your Bible training must be the same way. It must be to a certain intensity so that an increase in Bible knowledge is stimulated. You must push yourself so you can “flip on the lightswitch” for learning any subject, most importantly the subject of the bible.
If you decide not to train hard in the gym or in your study, you simply will not improve, it is as simple as that.
And this is where those who subscribe to the philosophy of liberalism find themselves time and time again. Theirs is a philosophy of comfort and ease. “Why push yourself to improve when you were built to fail?” the liberal may rhetorically ask. The merits of that argument can be discussed on another day, but the results of that attitude are brazenly apparent.
When you approach your study with a lackadaisical attitude motivated by the hippie-like philosophy of liberalism, you will not make any improvements for years. You may “read your bible every day“, allegedly, but you will make no progress. Because you simply did not push yourself hard enough to give your mind the necessary stimulus for growth and improvement.
When fun is prioritized over faith, you have the dysfunctional youth group model where no one knows anything.
The priority in the Bible study training model should be the improvement of biblical knowledge. When fun is made the priority, no one improves. And people fail to improve for years at a time while being around others who fail to improve for years at a time.
We call this the “youth group” – where fun is prioritized over faith. Where parents believe that 2 youth activities per week will stop their kids from having sex before marriage. And it comes as a great shock to them when their kids leave the church because they had no substance or foundation for their faith. They had no intensity imposed on them by their teachers. There was no need for the improvement of the individual because there was no enforced accountability – as low-value as accountability is.
But what will always happen is people will resort to the type of “work” that provides them with the most comfort in their lives. They will never pursue what seems overtly difficult or what will require the most effortful work.
This is why people gravitate towards the philosophy of liberalism – because it is one of ease and comfort. It is a philosophy of social acceptance and personal acceptance. There is no need for you to work on yourself and improve in those groups. Everyone is just as broken as you are, why move on and improve yourself and your life?
Fun should never be prioritized over your faith. The priority should be discipline, personal obedience, and personal improvement. The priority should be on the systems that create results rather than on the social events that provide nothing.
Set rigorous standards for yourself. Push yourself to read and focus more.
I – Start with the reading – read a small volume of Bible each day.
A small amount of Bible reading is better than no Bible reading. Even better is a small amount of bible reading combined with intensity. Arnold Schwarzenegger has famously stated that he could do one set of one exercise for one muscle and have it be more productive than someone else’s entire workout. He attributed this to the focus and intensity with which he would approach that single set. Another bodybuilder, Mike Mentzer, popularized a training protocol of one set per muscle per workout, as few as 2 times per week. Each set consisted of an all-out, max intensity effort that pushed the muscles to absolute failure.
Your Bible study can be the same way – put massive effort into a smaller volume and you will make progress. An extremely intense reading of ten verses will be more effective than a cursory reading of 4 chapters.
II – Incorporte memory work – you need to be writting the commands of God in your mind.
Do this through the focused work of memorization. Start with the aggressive bible verse collection.
It is popular in Bible study to do these cross-reference exercises where you link various passages to other passages in the Bible. This is a good exercise. But even more valuable is the memorization of Bible passages. There is no faster way to cross-reference the Bible than to have the entire length of the passages in your mind.
III – Hold yourself to a higher standard of behavior. Do not associate with people who mock at the strenuous life.
Enjoy the strenuous life as a man. You need to dive into the work with focused intensity. Others may look at your effort and what you are doing and try to discourage you. Some people will always try to discourage you from training too hard, working too hard, or trying too hard to succeed. This is only because your work ethic makes the feebleness of their work ethic painfully obvious to them. They never want to work, so they do not want you to work either.
If you start working you call into question their lethargy. They are forced to acknowledge that they are either lazy or that you are crazy for your effort. And much of the time people will remain in their fixed mindsets and call you crazy for your effort.
You must reject these people. Split from the pack. Do not worry about being a part of the group, you do not need the group. Your main concern is with the improvement of the self. If the group comes into conflict with that goal, you need to separate yourself from the group. Invest in your effort and it will pay you dividends always.
Conduct Yourselves Like Men.
