The Bible as Textbook
Sunday, February 4th, 2007
s most of you know, Christy and I are homeschooling our son. I’m not ready to make the claim that homeschooling is the right choice for everyone, but for us, it definitely was the right choice.
One of the challenges with homeschooling is deciding what curricula to use in educating our child. Thanks to the increasing freedoms over the past several decades across our nation with regard to homeschooling, there are many, many choices and options available.
Over the course of this first year of homeschooling (our son was in the public school system up until the end of last year), we have already made several modifications in our curricula and looked at many different choices for various subjects.
Quite a few of the choices out there claim to be biblical in content, either directly based on the Bible or based on principles derived from the Bible. For example, we started the year with a grammar curriculum that used verses and passages from Scripture to illustrate different grammatical principles. The concept behind it was that the child would not only learn correct grammar, but get familiar with many passages of Scripture in the process.
We are no longer using that curriculum for several reasons. One reason is that it used the King James version, which is not a version we use much at all in our home, nor is it the way we speak in modern English anyway. The other reason is what I am about to get to in this post.
Recently, while looking at some curricula online, Christy came across a reading program that, again, used the Bible as the source of its material. Like with the grammar curriculum, the idea seems to be that children get exposed to the Bible as a side-benefit to their academic studies.
Now, in and of itself, I don’t have a problem with this. Obviously, I want my son to become familiar with Scripture. That’s why we take time every morning in our homeschool schedule to read from the Bible, reading straight through from Genesis to Revelation.
However, I have a concern about some of these ideas for Bible-based curricula that prevents me from embracing them 100% wholesale. That concern goes back to my days in Bible college and seminary. It is the idea of using the Bible as any sort of textbook.
When I was in college, it was not uncommon for a course to require us to read certain books of the Bible 4, 5, or even 10 times through. And often, 10% or so of our grade on a test was the simple question, “Did you complete the assigned reading for this test?”
You would think that reading through so much Scripture would be extraordinarily life-changing, right? Wrong. At least for me, it wasn’t. And for many of my classmates, it did not appear to be, either.
Why is that? And what is the alternative? Just not reading the Bible altogether? I hardly think so!
I think that the reason the Bible had so little impact on my life in those days (and the same was true in seminary), was because the Bible was a textbook. It was a place to find answers to homework questions. It was a source for a grade needed to keep moving through my studies. It was a means to an end that had nothing to do with Jesus Christ.
The most frequently given basis for viewing the Bible in this way is the familiar command to “Study to shew thyself approved unto God” (2 Tim 2:15, KJV). However, as I have pointed out several times before here on this blog, the translation of “study” has no basis that I can find. For this reason, almost every translation apart from the King James translates that word as “be diligent” or “do your best” or “work hard”, etc.
See, the problem with using the Bible as a textbook is what that ultimately leads to. It leads to viewing the Bible in small, disconnected fragments (the basis for “prooftexting”), and it leads to seeing the Bible as a means to knowledge alone.
It also can lead to what I see as some unbalanced views of Scripture. For example, some people turn the Bible into a scientific textbook, using it as the “proof” for certain scientific concepts. Others turn the Bible into a legal document, using it as justification or condemnation of certain activities or choices.
What was Jesus’ view of the Bible of his day (what we now call the Old Testament)?
You do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent. You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life. (John 5:38-40)
The point of the Old Testament, according to Jesus, was to point people to Himself, the source of eternal life. Hebrews 1:1-2 seems to confirm this notion, as well.
It took me quite a few years to “detox” from my view of the Bible as a textbook. And what I have found in the time since then is that a relationship with the One to Whom the Bible points is so much more fulfilling, so much more exciting, and so much more life-changing than merely studying the Bible in and of itself.
One of the buzzwords currently used by some who have the same idea I have here is “narrative”. The Bible is a narrative. This recaptures the notion of seeing the Bible as a whole, not a bunch of smaller parts. It doesn’t minimize anything about Scripture, nor its origin, nor its value to our lives. But it seems to me to put it into a more proper perspective. I like that.
So, in our homeschool, we have chosen not to use the Bible as a textbook, but rather to give it the place it deserves — as a written record (or revelation) of who Jesus is, and how to have a relationship with the Father (and by extension, each other) through Jesus.
It is my hope and prayer that my son will grow up to know the One revealed in Scripture, and not just know the Scripture itself.
Until next time,
steve 
