Unequally Yoked

by Will Walker

I was taught to have quiet times, first as a child in the corner and then as an adult at the coffee shop. Both are wonderful and should be treasured as part of the American way of life. What I don’t understand, though, is how the Bible got mixed up with quiet times the way it did.

Never have two simple words so shaped the way people think about what it means to study the Bible. The approach has become common, even prescriptive:

1. Find a quiet place, maybe some music in the background, coffee/tea, comfy chair, etc.
2. Read something in the Bible.
3. Maybe journal or pray about what you read.
4. Maybe read something that someone else has to say about what you read.
5. Impress someone with whatever it is you learned (optional, and for experienced Christians only).

This would by most standards be considered a good approach to Bible study. I think it stinks. I am biased, of course, because I fail miserably at the whole quiet time agenda. I always have.

For the last year or so I haven't really read the Bible in this way: personally, quietly, devotionally. I have discussed parts of it with people, read it to prepare for talks and small groups, written about some of its passages and ideas on this blog, and read a few complimentary books along the way. Either I am a horrible Christian or it is possible to learn the Bible and love Jesus/people apart from this approach. I think I’ll go with the latter.

I think if you explained what a quiet time is to Peter and John that they would get a good laugh together when you weren't around. It seems to me that the Bible was meant to be read aloud, heard in community, talked about at dinner, applied to actual life, argued, anything but confined to the comfy recesses of your "devotional life".

Have you ever had this experience: Someone asks if you read a particular book. You say yes. They ask if you liked it, and you say you loved it, and they say, "What's it about?" This is the point when you realize that you can't articulate much once you get past the very obvious stuff. It was terrifically meaningful when you read it, but somehow it lost its place in your mind and life. I’m saying the same thing happens with stuff you read in quiet times past.

I’m always assuming that I understand what I read, and it isn’t until I get to talk about it that I see how much I still don’t understand. People see things differently, and when we talk about what we know we allow others to show us a new perspective, and vice versa.

Paul urged us to “let the word of Christ dwell in us richly.” The context shows the communal emphasis of this command. It is overtly relational: peace, one body, teaching and admonishing, wisdom, singing, marriage, slavery, etc. If the only place the Bible gets to “dwell” in your life is your quiet time— not in your conversations and communities— I think you might be surprised at how much assumed understanding you have.

To turn all this on its head, I propose something more than a coffee shop with a loveseat. I offer to you the TV devotional, wherein you get up every morning to snuggle up on the couch and spend and hour or so watching your favorite shows (Tivo makes this all possible). Then, during the rest of the day when you would normally watch and talk about TV, you could read and talk about the Bible, especially as it interacts with your actual life.

I call this the communal quiet time. An evening might be spent with family or friends reading and talking about your ideas, maybe even serving people as the Bible suggests.

I’m not opposed to quiet moments of reflection or prayer. I just think that the Bible is noisier than our devotionals will permit.

Comments

[marilyn]

I think it is great that you are enjoying who you are in your relationship to the Lord. I am sure He likes living in you and with you, with your style of being. I am, in contrast, meditative for chunks of time. That's just me. I know He enjoys me too. It's a marriage in the true sense, it's the connection that any healthy Christian marriage is a fuzzy picture of.

I know in a growing marriage I have all kinds of times, not just quiet, with my husband. And, alot of exquisite quiet as well. I guess it's okay to have a quiet time.

[Walker]

absolutely, it is okay to have a quiet time. What I want to consider is that perhaps a quiet time, in and of itself, is a inadequate approach to Bible study.Many of my friends measure their spiritual life by consistency in queit times and not in love for Jesus/people, which is the aim of Bibe study to begin with. So I am not doing away with meditative queit times, just saying that Bible study should not be restricted to that.

[marilyn]

Hello, I am asking some of my friends to read the pieces on this musings blog. I hope they do. It's got the fragrance of some of the L'Abri stuff I enjoy.

Now I will wait to read what you write back on the Funk and Faith train of thought.

[Christie]

I think this issue has much to do with personality. The main thing is that in some method you are reading and stuyding the Bible and allowing it to transform you. I get a lot out of preparing to teach, and that kind of thing, but sometimes, at least for me, it can become a little impersonal. So I often need that secluded time...but a personal relationship with Christ is what it's all about - however you go about getting there.

[d white]

Will-
I'm on board. Chuck the quiet times and meet with Jesus! Sometimes I wonder what our communities would look like if we would stop checking off the box and start allowing the Scriptures to soak into our souls. Heck, even the Pharisees "knew" stuff, yet they missed Jesus. Thanks for the post.

[paul]

I think that one of the difficult things about adjusting our thinking about "quiet times" is that it hits at one of the core areas of "discipleship" that we learn in, maybe, step 2 of the 12-step process of discipleship in evangelical settings.

In my times with guys I mentor, one of my first questions is, without fail, "How are your times in the Word?" The funny thing is that I've been studying other stuff that Paul has said in Colossians, and he seems to be pretty much against expecting man-centered, common sense outward actions to produce a healthy walk with Christ. He actually lists some "don'ts" that he has the gall to say "have the appearance of wisdom... but lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence."

I'm pretty sure he's not talking about quiet times here, but he also refers to the "basic principles of this world," which I take to be what we often call common sense. Stuff like: if you want to know God, read about Him in His revealed Word. That makes sense, but what is going too far is insisting that in order to know God, you have to read the word EVERY day, and that this one outward act is a good indicator of your spiritual health.

I think, ultimately, your walk will be set on a good course if you are absorbed in the Word of God. Jesus seemed to deem it important that we "abide in" [dwell on] His words. Plus, the above quoted verse by Paul about the word of Christ "dwelling" in us. Obviously I'm not advocating "throwing the baby out with the bath water." I simply admit that I can be quite legalistic with my insistence that I and others have daily "quiet times."