Chocolate Sculpture or Chocolate Swirls? Engaging God’s Word with Both Sides of Your Brain

Some people might study a chocolate sculpture to examine every detail with precision. How did the sculptor make each cut or create different textures? What holds it up? Is it one piece or sections bound together? What makes the eyes look so real?

On the other hand, some people aren’t interested in the details; they just want to appreciate the chocolate decorations, big or small, for their artistic impression and the mood they create. In a sense, they want to meditate on the chocolate art rather than study it.

What’s the difference between studying the Bible and meditating on it?

Study is a linear approach to the Bible that follows steps and organizes the material to make sense of it. It is necessary for us to dig deep to understand what the Bible teaches, but it is a very left-brain process.

• The left-brain is the logical, linear, fact-storing part of the brain.
• The right brain is the abstract, creative, holistic part of the brain.

Most of us have a tendency toward one or the other. Which way do you lean? If you’re a left-brained person, then study is a natural realm for you, but if you’re more of a right-brained person, you may find study difficult, cumbersome, and boring.

Right brain folks would rather look at the big picture of Scripture than dig up details. That’s okay. They want to express themselves. They doodle. They dabble. They see the world in pictures rather than linear structures.

Although the left and right sides of the brain serve different functions, they both want to have a part in the process. Unfortunately, most of us learn to study the Bible and that’s it. The right brain never gets involved, which is why we may tend to find studying the Bible (or anything else) boring.

You see, we have to engage God’s Word with both sides of the brain. Yes, we need the left-brain to study, organize, and analyze the Bible. That’s how we learn the substance of God’s Word. However, we also need to engage the right brain to meditate on God’s Word.

When I talk about meditating on the Bible, I’m simply encouraging you to engage the right brain to help finish processing what you’ve learned.

Christian meditation is not weird, creepy spiritual exercises designed to empty our minds. Christian meditation is simply allowing our minds some breathing space to take the things we learned with the left brain and let them have time to dance and play in our head and heart. It allows the right brain to turn the truth over in our minds, looking at it from different angles.

The problem is we’re too busy and we often lack the focus to let our minds dwell on a passage of Scripture for very long. Most of us think of meditation as a static activity in which we stare at a passage of the Bible and think about it. For me, meditating on God’s Word is a way to enjoy it and engage with it in a personal and casual way.

We need to approach Scripture with both sides of our brain. Left brainers tend to do all the left-brain work of study and when we’re done analyzing, we think we’ve mastered it. But to truly experience the Bible, we need to engage the right side of the brain to make it personal and bring us closer to living it out. Right brainers might tend to skip the study and get lost in an abstract world of finding meaning and significance in the Scripture.

• Study without meditation tends to produce lifeless knowledge.
• Meditation without study tends to produce emotional whims.

Study followed by meditation produces a depth of insight that makes the Bible come alive, making us a part of it as we experience it in our hearts, and making it a part of us as we live it out. Both study and meditation are valuable and necessary.

We study the Bible to understand it, but we meditate on the Bible to make it personal.

Applying the Bible to our lives is one of the steps of studying the Bible, but that can be a mere cognitive awareness of what we should do.

I’m talking about getting the Bible to go deep and take root so that doing isn’t just a single, conscious act of obedience, but a natural, inherent part of your being that continuously, unconsciously lives the truth for the rest of your life. Do you see the difference?

We cannot come to the Bible to identify propositions and principles for us to obey religiously. That perception holds the principles as something external to us. We identify them, study them, admire them, and obey them, but they are an external truth.

The process of meditation engages the truth in a different way. When the imagination gets involved, it processes the information holistically so the emotions get involved. The process engages both mind and heart.

I’m not talking about seeking an emotional experience or letting our emotions run away, but when we experience the Bible, it affects all of who we are. We are digesting the Word so it becomes a part of us.

This is an excerpt from Sweeter Than Chocolate: Developing a Healthy Addiction to God’s Word. Used by permission.

 

Five Methods of Left-Brain Bible Study

For many left-brained students, “follow your curiosity” may not seem structured enough. For those who want a more structured approach, you might want to choose from one of these methods.

If you’re more of the right-brained type, hold on until the end, where I’ll give some simple adaptations that will make these structured methods of study a little more fun.

1. Bible Study: Traditional Method (Observation, Interpretation, Application)
2. Christy’s IDEA Method for Bible Study
3. Biographical (Character) Study
4. Bible Study Methods: Outlining and Chart Making
5. Bible Study Methods: Word Studies

 

This is an excerpt from Sweeter Than Chocolate: Developing a Healthy Addiction to God’s Word. Used by permission.

 

Bible Study Methods: Word Studies

Word studies are probably the most popular form of Bible study for many folks. Sometimes this is borne out of need, such as a realization that you would like to have more peace in your life, so you look up all the verses that talk about peace to see what you can learn.

This kind of study can be simple, looking up the verses in an English concordance. Or it can be more involved, looking up the original Greek or Hebrew words and expanding your study accordingly (as described in the section on how to use a concordance).

Whether you choose a simple word study or get more involved, word studies can be an effective and rewarding way to study the Bible.

Be careful not to make this your only method for studying the Bible or you will miss a lot of the Bible not covered in random word searches.

This is an excerpt from Sweeter Than Chocolate: Developing a Healthy Addiction to God’s Word. Used by permission.

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Video by The Bible Project

Here is a fun example of the results of a word study and all you can learn from this method of searching the scriptures.

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Bible Study Methods: Outlining and Chart Making

Outlining and chart making are methods of synthesis or boiling it down to its core elements. This is a big picture approach to Scripture and less about examining the minute details.

Identify sections and paragraphs within a larger section of Scripture. Look for changes in subject matter, repeated phrases, phrases that mark an introduction (now concerning), or phrases that mark a conclusion (therefore).

Give each paragraph a 2-5 word title that captures the main idea of the paragraph in relation to the context. It may help to capture the idea for the moment.

After you have captured the idea of each paragraph, you can go back and evaluate them or brainstorm how to word them in similar ways. Some people like to have each title start with the same letter, for instance, or use the same form of grammar. That’s often what pastors do in their sermon points.

Outlining can go a step further to develop a chart. I’ve seen some very elaborate charts, even ones that contained tiny drawings as visual reminders of the text.

For a seminary project, some of my classmates chose to outline the Gospel of Matthew in pictures on one sheet of paper. That was an impressive feat, if you ask me.

If you like to draw, this might appeal to you. Many left-brained people like to organize information in charts. If that’s you, you’ll know how to chart the Bible text. This unique learning experience embeds the text in your heart and mind for years to come.

This is an excerpt from Sweeter Than Chocolate: Developing a Healthy Addiction to God’s Word. Used by permission.

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Video by The Bible Project

Here’s an elaborate example of what charting a book of the Bible could look like, if you’re creative and talented. Of course, stick figures work, too. It can be as simple or elaborate as you wish, just break down a text into sections and use text or drawings (optional) to explain the passage. I guarantee you’ll remember what you learned.

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Biographical (Character) Study

Character studies are enjoyable and rewarding. I like to begin by looking up the person in a Bible dictionary to get an overview of this person. Then I move to an exhaustive concordance to look up every reference to the person.

Narrative sections should be read as a whole, and not just isolated verses that use the person’s name. So look up a verse and take time to read the whole chapter for surrounding context.

After reading the relevant Bible passages, make a list of events or an outline of the person’s life. Notice any comments the Bible makes about that person and list those separately.

For example, in the New Testament, James spoke of Elijah as a model for prayer (James 5:16-18). That was not a biographical reference, but a commentary on Elijah’s life. Such a commentary gives us reason to look closer at the prayer example of Elijah.

When doing biographical study, decide what life lessons this person learned, especially in their relationship with God. Apply those life lessons to your life in specific ways. Decide how to act on them.

This is an excerpt from Sweeter Than Chocolate: Developing a Healthy Addiction to God’s Word. Used by permission.

 

Christy’s IDEA Method for Bible Study

For those of you who prefer a casual but structured approach to things, I have a simple but effective plan for you to follow. I call my approach IDEA. When you want to get the main idea of a passage: Identify, Define, Explore, and Apply.

Identify. Look at what the passage says—not what you think it says or what you’ve heard it says. Look at what it actually says. Also, make note of what it doesn’t say (we tend to fill in other ideas as we read).

Define. In order to understand a text, you need to be sure you understand what it is saying. Start with good old Webster’s Dictionary and look up words—even if you think you know what they mean. You can often gain surprising new insights from this habit without even investing in other Bible reference books. Then expand your query by looking up people, places, and other nouns in a Bible dictionary. This is the best way to gain biblical background and context for any passage. A Bible dictionary contains a wealth of information.

Explore. Take those people and places and explore them more thoroughly. Look up places on a map or Bible atlas. Look up people and cultural information in other reference books to gather a broader understanding. In short, follow your curiosity.

Apply. What good is it to study the Bible if we don’t intend to do what it says? James addresses this issue when he writes, “But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves” (James 1:22). Consider whether there is an action to take, a warning to heed, or an example to follow. Keep a journal, if you like. Write down a specific action you can take, even if it is as simple as “I will reflect on this verse today.”

Studying the Bible doesn’t have to be a complicated process. You can do this. Just follow your curiosity, whether you follow specific steps or not.

This is an excerpt from Sweeter Than Chocolate: Developing a Healthy Addiction to God’s Word. Used by permission.

 

Bible Study: Traditional Method (Observation, Interpretation, Application)

Churches and seminaries have taught the traditional method of Bible study for years. In fact, it has become the benchmark of Bible study for many people. It involves three steps: observation of the text, interpretation of the text, and application of the text.

Observation. The first step in studying a passage is to observe what it actually says. Observation involves reading the text to make simple statements that are true according to the text: Matthew is a tax collector. It’s easy to read into the text things that are implied or correlations our mind produces (assumption: Matthew is greedy), but observe the text alone before jumping to conclusions.

When observing, look at terms, structure, context, and setting. Ask who, what, when, where, why, and how questions.

• Who is involved?
• Where is it happening?
• When is it happening?
• What is happening?
• Why is it happening?
• How is it happening?

By making simple observations, we ground our interpretation in the actual text. Observations also give us a list of possible areas for further investigation.

Interpretation. The next step is to get at the original meaning of the text. Interpretation gets beyond the facts and delves into meaning. What does the text mean? It’s not a matter of what it means to us (that’s application), but what it meant to the author and original recipients.

Interpretation is the place to investigate the historical background of the book of the Bible, the author, the recipients, the main characters, the locations, and other relevant subjects (for example, perhaps the text mentions an idol or false god).

This is also the place to use your concordance to do some word studies. Once we understand what the text meant to the original readers, we can apply that to our own lives. And keep in mind that one point of interpretation can yield many applications.

Application. Application asks the question: how does the truth of God’s Word relate to my life situation and what am I going to do about it? Application begins by first developing a principle based on the text. A principle is a broad statement of biblical truth that applies to anyone.

A personal application is a specific statement of how the principle becomes practice in your life. Relate the truth to your situation (not to someone else).

This is an excerpt from Sweeter Than Chocolate: Developing a Healthy Addiction to God’s Word. Used by permission.

 

The Secret to Bible Study: Follow Your Curiosity

The secret to successful Bible study is not a five-step plan or a rigid set of rules; the secret to successful and satisfying Bible study is to follow your curiosity.

That’s right! You can toss the rules if you cultivate a sense of curiosity and overcome our inherent laziness (yes, we all have it). Oh come on, you know you’ve read Paul’s letters to the Corinthians and wondered, “Where was Corinth and what was it like?” It’s easier to dismiss such thoughts than to look for answers.

Here’s the plan: The next time you’re reading your Bible, challenge yourself to look up three things in your Bible dictionary. It could be a person, a place, or a word you don’t understand. It only takes a few minutes to follow your curiosity, so go for it! The reward of a few minutes of effort is a fresh new understanding and appreciation for the text.

Bible study is more about attitude than aptitude. You can learn how to study the Bible if you have a desire to do so.

This is an excerpt from Sweeter Than Chocolate: Developing a Healthy Addiction to God’s Word. Used by permission.

 

Chocolate Preferences: Left and Right Brained Approaches to the Bible

Do you prefer light chocolate or dark chocolate? Most people have a preference—usually a strong preference. I used to say I preferred light chocolate because I didn’t like the bitter taste of the dark chocolate. Then, a friend gave me some expensive dark chocolate and it wasn’t bitter at all. In fact, it totally changed my perspective on chocolate. While I still prefer light chocolate, I now have an appreciation for both.

In a sense, I want to give you an appreciation for both light and dark chocolate. You may prefer one or the other, which is normal, but I think you’ll see the merits of both when it comes to how we appreciate God’s Word.

First of all, each of us is hardwired as either left brained (logical) or right brained (creative), or at least we’re somewhere on the spectrum between the two. We have a built-in preference for one or the other. We approach life either logically or creatively. Consequently, we approach God’s Word either logically or creatively. That’s why one approach to the Bible does not fit all.

Bible study is a very left-brain logical approach to the Bible. It focuses on itemizing, synthesizing, and organizing the text. It involves outlines, charts, diagrams, lists, and detailed analysis. Left-brained people usually thrive on this stuff. Right-brained people want to die a little inside.

Left-brain (logical) methods of studying the Bible don’t appeal to right-brain (creative) people and, conversely, right-brain (creative) methods of studying the Bible make left-brain (logical) people uncomfortable.

For example, meditating on the Bible is sort of vague and ambiguous to most left-brained people because it defies the set parameters of rigid study. Bible teachers don’t often teach Scripture meditation, presumably because it is not logical enough for the teachers, who tend to be left-brained.

I’m going to suggest that Scripture meditation is merely a right-brained approach (or actually an infinite number of right-brained approaches) to studying the Bible.

Neither approach is right or wrong. Each provides its own unique insights into God’s Word. No matter which approach you prefer, there are benefits of integrating both methods into how you approach the Bible.

It’s important to do a little of both because left-brain Bible study methods analyze the text and its context. We need to do this to understand the text.

Right brain approaches to Bible study take us beyond analyzing the text to immersing ourselves in it and absorbing it.

This is important because logical approaches to study can analyze and dissect the Bible until it is dead. Someone could diagram every sentence of the Bible and not be transformed by the power of God’s Word.

Remember, if you don’t try the dark chocolate, you’ll never know what you’ve been missing. I hope you will learn to enjoy them both.

This is an excerpt from Sweeter Than Chocolate: Developing a Healthy Addiction to God’s Word. Used by permission.

 

Carving Methods: Ways to Study the Bible

Before your eyes gloss over at the thought of Bible study, let me assure you: I intend to make this discussion simple, painless, and perhaps even fun. If words like exegesis and hermeneutics have scared you off from learning how to study your Bible, I’m here to give you a fresh, new look at how to study. I also know from experience that you will get the most from your Bible study if you use a method compatible with your personality.

When students decide to learn how to study the Bible, many of the resources are overly technical. We read words like exegesis and hermeneutics and feel overwhelmed. Based on the technical explanations, it’s easy to think Bible study is only for scholarly types. Despite this perception, please don’t give up on studying the Bible. If you can read, you can study the Bible.

I do not intend to use big words, but since I brought it up, let me put you at ease about the meaning of exegesis and hermeneutics. Exegesis is extracting or pulling out the meaning of the text (rather than reading one’s opinion into the text). Exegesis looks for what the text originally meant because it can’t mean something today that it didn’t mean then. Hermeneutics looks for what the text means here and now. Hermeneutics gets into interpretation and application of the text. That wasn’t so bad, was it? (Why don’t the scholars just use plain English, right?)

Again, let me assure you that I’m not going to use technical terms to explain how to study the Bible because it’s not necessary. If that’s what you are looking for, there are plenty of other resources available, such as Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart’s How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth.

The next problem people encounter is trying to follow a precise set of steps for Bible study. It’s too many steps for some people. It’s too structured. It feels cumbersome.

This is an excerpt from Sweeter Than Chocolate: Developing a Healthy Addiction to God’s Word. Used by permission.