Why I Don't Believe in Bible Memorization
I have a bad feeling about this!
You can't handle the truth!
I am Groot.
Inconceivable!
My friends, you bow to no one.
Girls, girls, you're both pretty! Can I go home now?
It's a very simple question, professor. "Why do you hate God?"
Kill the Beast!
Albuquerque! See I can do it too. Snorkel.
I can do this all day!
Go ahead and peak at the bottom to see how you did. How many did you get right?
If nothing else, you have learned what movies me and my family love, right?
If you sit around our kitchen table while my family is gathered, eating or playing games, you will hear a constant stream of movie, TV show, radio drama and vine quotes peppered throughout. Maybe you and your family do the same. Often times, a well placed quote, will illicit laughter, cut the tension in the room or have all of us finish the quote in unison. Guests at our house are often amazed at the sheer number of quotes me and my family have memorized.
Do you want to know the secret of how my family became so proficient at quoting so many references?
We watched a lot of movies, TV shows and vines and listened to a lot of radio dramas...over and over again. That's it. No neat memory tricks. Just a continual enjoyment of entertainment that helped make us disciples of our favorite movies, TV shows, radio dramas and internet videos.
How we memorized our favorite pop culture references is the exact opposite of how we are trained to memorize Bible verses. This is part of the reason that I don't believe in Bible memorization...at least in its current iteration.
Today's Bible memorization is devoid of the very thing that makes the Word of God so powerful...context. We have come up with neat little ways to lead people to Jesus, usually involving the Gospel of John or the book of Romans. However, the quotes we teach our children are often bullet pointed explaining what the verse means in the greater context of God's plan of salvation, but not allowing children and youth to discover themselves through the reading of Scripture, in context, these self evident truths.
When I came to Christ at 20 years old, there was no internet for the masses. I hungered to know more about Jesus. However, I was a terrible notetaker at church. I would hear a quote that the pastor would say during his sermon and want to revisit it at home after church or later that night. I didn't know yet what a concordance was (basically a book version of a search engine for keywords in the Bible).
So I did the only thing I knew to do to satisfy my curiosity about that verse or section of Scripture that I couldn't get out of my head. I opened the Bible and read...a lot. Sometimes I would remember the book that we studied at church. Other times, I would only remember that it was found in the Old or New Testament. So I would read and scan and search for the quote until I found it.
What I got out of seeking elusive Scriptural quotes was nothing less than an education. In these first few years of my budding faith, I must have read the New Testament 40 times and parts of the Old Testament half as much. As I became more familiar with the Word of God (but still just as bad at taking notes), it took me less and less time to find hidden Scripture references.
I found that each of the people that God used to write the Bible had their own unique style or voice that I could almost hear as I read the words they wrote. Paul sounded different than John, Peter sounded different than James or Jude. Even the gospel writers, though similar, still had unique things that they focused on. Mark was to the point. Matthew was very concerned with referencing the Old Testament. Luke was thorough in the little details concerning culture and surroundings in both Luke and Acts. By recognizing the voice of the quote I was searching for, I had a good starting place to begin my quest.
As I continued in this education, I began to notice something else. I was becoming familiar, not just with the voices of where the Scripture quotes were coming from, but the subject matter of each of the individual books and letters that they wrote. Again this helped decrease my time when searching for passages I was not fully familiar with.
Another thing I began to notice was that I began to know specific often repeated passages of Scripture. I was not just learning the voice and the subjects, I was learning specific passages. Now I couldn't always remember them verbatim, as with traditional Bible memorization, but I knew the context of all of these passages of Scripture. Therefore, I didn't just know the passage, but the why of the passage. Which simply meant that I could, if I wanted to, write the bullet points to the plan of salvation or other subjects covered in the Scripture myself because I had grown so familiar with the Word of God, I knew where to find the information.
Today, I can quote to you many different Scriptures, not just because I am a pastor either. (Side note: Unfortunately, many in ministry today as pastors have never read through the Word of God even once.) It is because of my love for the Word of God and my constant review of the Word I love so much and the Savior it reveals whom I have pledged to follow with my life that I know so many of His words.
I want my children to also know God and His Word in this way. Not through some random quote separated from any meaningful context, but like a movie that they watch over and over again until they know every detail intimately. Then, they will memorize the Word of God, continually seek out the quotes they don't know (hopefully without using too many shortcuts) and understand how to construct a plan of salvation for someone else through Christ, not based upon a rote memorization, but through their actual knowledge of Christ through the Scriptures.
If you want to know where to begin with your children knowing the Word of God for themselves, I have a couple of blueprints that can help. May we build up a culture within our families where our children find it as easy to quote the Word of God as they do their favorite movie.
Answers: 1) Star Wars, 2) A Few Good Men, 3) Guardians of the Galaxy or Avengers: Infinity War, 4) The Princess Bride, 5) Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, 6) Megamind, 7) God's Not Dead, 8) Beauty and the Beast, 9) National Treasure, 10) Captain America: The First Avenger/Civil War or Avengers: Endgame.
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