Lesson 3 | Searching Details
Danger: Lost in Searching
Sometimes technology and ease of access can actually make us dumber. This seems counter-intuitive. If information is so readily available, shouldn’t we know more?
Not necessarily. For one, knowing I can access the information whenever I desire tends to make me lazy regarding actually learning any of it. Afterall, I’ll just look it up when I need it. (This would be the reason that I am so bad at navigating the city where I live—Google Maps is always there to get me to where I want to go while keeping me oblivious to understanding where I am!)
The other reason more information can make us dumber is that it hinders focus. This is a danger when using searches to study a passage.
Do NOT get lost in searching when studying a passage.
We already talked about the danger of treating the Bible like a car manual. But even if we avoid that pitfall, it doesn’t mean we will keep to our route. It is easy to aim at a destination (i.e. understanding the passage in front of you) only to get lost in exploration along the way (i.e. searching this and then that and then the other thing) and never arrive.
Does that mean we should never explore along the way? Of course not! But endless exploration without ever getting anywhere is a problem. For such a practice will leave us lop-sided in our maturity as we will always tend toward certain topics that interest us to the neglect of those other topics God has written about.
For example, say you are studying Matthew 5:38-42 and the sentence “Do not resist the one who is evil” grabs your attention.
38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41 And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. 42 Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.
You begin wondering more about what resisting or not resisting evil looks like practically. Great. So you begin searching and discover all sorts of things. You read about heeding the law to resist the wicked (Proverbs 28:4), the need to resist on the evil day with the armor of God (Ephesians 6:13), the command to resist the devil by submitting to God (James 4:7), and more. In particular, you are intrigued by the idea of resisting on “the evil day” as it says in Ephesians and begin investigating what that could mean. Amos, you find, speaks of “the day of disaster” to which the rich pay no concern while they falsely live at ease (Amos 6:3). Since you know little of the context of this book, you decide to give it a perusal, which turns out to be incredibly insightful...
But... What you have not done is reckoned with the shocking command of Jesus to “not resist the one who is evil.” Ironically, you are now the one falsely resting at ease instead of submitting to the confrontation of the Christ!