What is your ideal Bible study? It may be one where your young people give you all the correct answers, quietly nodding as you dispense wisdom, and you get through all the questions you had prepared. I want to suggest that this may be the worst possible study!
Over the last few months, we have been considering the dynamic that the Bible gives us of God encountering our young people. When we open Scripture with them, it is worship! It is not a textual exercise like a high school study of Shakespeare. But that is what we so often make them.
The meaning of the text is important, but it’s only the means to an end. If our focus does not move beyond the meaning of the passage into the significance for their lives, then we have missed it!
A chance to explore and answer back
I remember the best Bible study I ever did. I was hoping six boys would turn up and only two did. I had prepared all the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 and only got through the first two. The reason was that, in the absence of the other boys, they kept asking questions and interrogating these two short sayings of Jesus until they were satisfied. I could have insisted that we get through all my questions, but this was so much better!
This was their chance to explore, to really hear what God was saying and answer back until it had sunk in. Perhaps they asked red herrings, questions that were not relevant, I cannot remember. But those questions were relevant to them, and it gave them the opportunity to process their faith in a safe space.
Creating a safe-to-ask environment
Sometimes we need to ask speculative questions to facilitate this. Speculative questions are questions we do not know the answer to: how do you think Zacchaeus felt? What would have happened if David hadn’t responded this way?
It is OK to not have the answers. It is a good thing. It shows them that you are not the all-knowing guru, the expert, and are a fellow pilgrim; a Christian like them, trying to work it out and follow Jesus. I have found the Swedish Bible study method a useful tool in giving the young people voice to interact with Scripture and share those interactions in a safe community. I have been surprised by how often they bring out some very significant points.
This will feel uncomfortable. Good. It should. But it is critical. There is only so far answering their questions will go. It is better to help them to answer their own questions, to work it through with them rather than for them.
