“Forty years of studying Scripture. Turns out that’s not the same thing.“
In January 1976, I was sitting in a college Bible class when my teacher — a friend from my own congregation — walked over and asked for my Bible. I handed it to him. He turned to the verse he was looking for and had to physically peel the pages apart. The gold gilt on the edges had never been separated. He looked down at me and said, “Read this much, do you, Scott…”
The room laughed. I laughed. And then I went back to thinking I knew plenty.
It would take me about twenty-seven more years to realize the joke was still on me.
The Study Bible Problem
I did not ignore the Bible after that day in class. Quite the opposite. Over the next four decades I studied it seriously — taught classes, cross-referenced passages, worked through different translations, dipped into the Hebrew and Greek when I needed to. Give me a topic and I can build a lesson around it. I know how to find the verses, connect the dots, and present the material in a way that holds a room.
What I was not doing — and this took a long time to admit — was reading it. Just sitting down and reading it the way you’d read anything else worth reading. No question to answer. No lesson to prepare. No cross-references to chase. Just reading.
I had been treating the Bible the way most of us treat a really good reference book. Search Amazon and you’ll find titles like “The Barbecue Bible,” “The Photography Bible,” “The Wine Bible.” What we mean when we call something a bible is: this is the ultimate answer book for this topic. And somewhere along the way, without meaning to, that’s exactly how I’d been using Scripture. As a sourcebook. An answer machine. A reference guide with better cover art.
I’m not saying Bible study is bad. I’ll say that clearly right now before anyone closes the tab.
But I’d begun to wonder whether reducing Scripture primarily to an answer book might cause you to miss the larger invitation running through it. And then in 2003, during a stretch of unexpected free time after losing a job, I sat down and started actually reading — and ran straight into a verse that turned my thinking upside down.
The Verse That Changed Everything
Jesus is speaking to some of the most serious Bible scholars of his day. These are not casual churchgoers. These are men who made it their career — their life’s work — to study Scripture, find the right answers, and live accordingly. And Jesus says this to them:
“You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”
— John 5:39-40 (NIV)
Read that again. Jesus is not criticizing people who ignored Scripture. He’s talking to people who studied it diligently. And he’s saying they still missed the whole point — because the whole point was Him.
That landed hard. I’d spent forty years studying the Bible. Apparently that wasn’t the same thing as reading it the way it was meant to be read — as a single, unified story pointing toward a person. I had all the answers. I’d just been answering the wrong question.
I describe myself as frequently wrong but never in doubt. I will change my opinion when my understanding changes — but I hold my opinions until they do. John 5:39-40 changed my opinion about what the Bible is actually for.
So What Is This Section?
This is not a section about how to study the Bible better. There are thousands of books and websites that do that well, and I’m not competing with them. I am not going to give you a system, a reading plan, or the five steps to deeper scriptural insight.
What I’m going to do is write honestly about what happens when someone who has taught the Bible for forty years tries to read it — actually read it — with fresh eyes and a different question. Not “what does this passage mean?” but “where is Jesus in this?”
Some of the posts in this section will be personal — moments where something I’d taught for years suddenly looked different. Some will trace a thread through Scripture that surprised me. Some will raise questions I’m still working out. A few will probably make you uncomfortable, including me. I’m fine with that. Frequently wrong, remember.
This section is also the foundation of a book I’ve been working on — the first of the Granddaddy Can’t series that might actually become a Granddaddy CAN. More on that as it develops.
What’s Coming
Here’s a taste of where the posts in this section are headed. I won’t pretend this is a definitive list — I’ll follow the threads that keep showing up as I read:
• Why God’s holiness feels so dangerous in Scripture — and why that’s actually good news
• Why grace almost always shows up before obedience in the biblical story, not after
• Why the Bible reveals God progressively — and what you miss if you skip straight to the end
• Why Jesus keeps showing up in places you didn’t expect him once you start noticing the patterns
• What Leviticus is actually doing there — and why I finally stopped skipping it
None of these are really about answering theological questions. They’re about what happens when you stop looking for answers long enough to meet the person the answers are supposed to point to.
If you’ve ever sat in a church pew for years and still felt like you were on the outside of something — like everyone else got a memo you didn’t — I think you’ll find something here worth reading. And if you’ve been studying the Bible your whole life and it’s starting to feel more like homework than anything else, well. Pull up a chair. You’re in the right place.
Grace and Peace —
Scott Walker