Biblical illiteracy doesn't make you biblically illiterate, it means your Bible literacy rate is too low

The phrase "Christians are biblically illiterate!" gets thrown around a lot.

It implies that many Christians only understand the Bible at a surface level and listen to sermons designed to be broken in to 15 second Instastory snapshots. My frustration with this status is that it suggests that biblical illiteracy is a disability Christians have to live with.

But what if biblical illiteracy isn't a condition you have to accept, but a skill that you can develop and grow? If that is the case, then how much should you be reading and studying the Bible? And what is the difference between bible journalling and bible studying?

As a teenager in youth group I was told that I should be journalling the Bible every day with the SOAP technique and hearing the voice of God speaking to me. But as I matured in my Christianity I would hit roadblocks in my journalling and fall out of a routine when reading the bible. This was often a result of being distracted by other things and not understanding the story of the bible, and not prioritising reading the word amongst other areas of life. Whenever I was presented with questions regarding the Bible, I didn't have an adequate answer because I wasn't reading it enough. If I wanted to learn more about an aspect of Christian doctrine, I didn't have the discipline of studying the Bible to developer a deeper conviction.

I would irregularly journal and read the bible, but I wasn't studying it.

What is the difference between journalling and studying the Bible?

Studying the Bible and journalling the Bible are two separate things, but both compliment each other. Journalling is the regular act of capturing your insights, revelations and questions for future reference. Studying is an intentional act of gaining specific knowledge on certain theological themes that develops your Bible roadmap.

The more you read the Bible, the more you'll get insights and questions about it. And the more you look in to those insights and questions, the deeper you'll be able to develop a personal theology that will enhance you regular reading of the Bible. And so on. 

So how often should you study the bible?

This depends on how interested you are in a certain topic. My personal definition of studying is the act of engaging in various resources to further understand your comprehension of something, taking notes on the topic, and creating summaries in your own words that are comprehensible to others.

This takes dedicated time and space to do, so may not happen every day. For myself, I try to allocate at least a few hours each week to do this. But with a newborn and a toddler, that doesn't always happen. I've started playing with the idea of passive study - intentionally engaging with content to help my understanding and taking simple notes as a I go along to create greater summaries later.

This is all a part of building my Bible roadmap; I'm filling in the blanks and discovering more routes that I can use in my understanding of the Bible.

Is this something all Christians should be doing?

The reality is that there are certain personality types and temperaments that are more passionate about studying than others. But I believe that all Christians should be developing their Bible roadmap at a pace that is realistic for them. There is a lot of content available, so there is almost not reason for us to not being doing further studies. The difficulty comes when trying to figure out what to do with all this information.

In future posts I'm planning on discussing some of the best practical techniques for capturing notes and thoughts and revelations and developing them in to articulated insights you can share with others. If you've gotten this far in to this post AND you're interested in learning that sort of thing, let me know in the comments and I'll aim to prioritise that sort of content.