The Hardest Class I Ever Had

The hardest class I ever had was also the best class I ever had. Dr. Wilkins' class on the study of the text of the Gospels ("exegesis" of the Gospels). Before every class began, my fellow students and I would compare how much time we spent that week on the homework for that class. The average was about 18 hours. And still, it was the best class I ever had.

The class had a lot of requirements before you could take it. You needed to have taken three semesters of Greek and two semesters of Greek exegesis. You needed to have hermeneutics (the discipline of interpreting the meaning of the text) under your belt. You needed these because in the class, we did our translations and analysis, grammatical diagramming, and exploration of each passage along several categories (textual, historical, theological, and pastoral). It was brutal, but we learned more about these passages than we would have with spending only a couple of hours with each passage.

But Dr. Wilkins' taught us one of the two most valuable Bible study techniques I've ever learned. For the first half of the semester, one of the most important parts of our assignments was to do one simple thing: Ask good questions. Each of our assignments had to include several good questions - questions about the text, questions about the historical background, questions about theology or application, and so on. Just questions.

We didn't have to come up with any answers to the questions! Before we worried about finding answers, we had to learn the discipline of asking good questions. During the second half of the semester, we then had to worry about finding answers using various resources, but that was actually easier than coming up with the questions.

It was hard for me to put unanswered questions in a homework assignment. That goes against my background. But once I started to follow his instruction, I found it to be invaluable for understanding a passage.

Try this: Spend some time in Scripture each day. Pick a book of the Bible to go through, and don't worry about getting through the book quickly. Pick a smaller book to start off, if you want. Just your Bible, a notebook, and a pen. Pick a small, complete unit, such as a paragraph. Read it. Read it again. Read it at least one more time. Then read it twice more. Then in your notebook, write down questions about the passage - questions about the words and phrase, about the historical context, about the theology involved, and questions about how the passage applies to us today. Don't worry about finding the answers - just practice asking excellent questions. If it takes you more than one day per paragraph, that's OK! Be sure to pray before and after each exercise. Work your way through the book, and then look back and reflect on what new insights you have into the text just by asking good questions.


I'll tell you about the other highly helpful technique next week.