Here's some wisdom I've gained from meditating on serving the Lord in academic study - studying for school - and how I think it applies to the Word of God.

Today I took an exam for Microbiology. I studied hard for it. I was in a study group. Two people in the study group went through the lecture slides all at once and memorized everything, which was an amazing feat because each lecture had between 20-25 slides with detailed information on each and there were 15 lectures. They memorized all the species names. They memorized every process. Everything. The rest of us took the time to break down the slides and understand what was going on. This way, though we may not remember the specifics, we can always answer any question asked on any topic in the lecture slides - because we understand it.

We met together and I asked the two that simply memorized everything some questions based on the slides. "What type of bacteria is staphylococcus aureus?" I asked. They both separately answered, "Impetigo, osteomyelitis, endocarditis, toxic shock syndrome, and food poisoning." I said, "No, no, not the diseases it causes, but what type of bacteria it is!" Yes, it lists the diseases, but you had to pay attention to the order of the lecture, thesubtitles of the sections in the lecture that it was under - Gram-positive anaerobic bacteria - and so on.

So, we thought we'd do better because we understood it more. Today we took the exam and the scores came in. I got an 82. One of the guys that memorized got in the 90's. So, it was better to just memorize the slides from rote than to even understand them to a great depth! As long as you knew your stuff, you were okay to be tested on it!

How does this apply to studying the Word of God? When I study the Word, I'm both understanding AND acquiring the information. If I accumulate the information, remembering what God's said and what is in the text, I can give exactly the Word of God to every situation outside of the text. I can act and operate on the verbatim utterance/revelation of the text, remembering the teaching and what I've studied. So, knowledge is good - having memorized and acquired knowledge is very useful and what we need to do. If I understand the Word of God and don't remember what it says verbatim, it's hard to remember and make judgment calls later on. Such as "The wisdom that descends from above is first pure, then peaceable, without hypocrisy, without partiality, ..." I forget the rest. And I know it's somewhere in James. I understand the text. It helps me to make decisions, to stear clear of false teaching and doctrine or people that will mislead, to disseminate the  ;wisdom from God that I've prayed for from just my own thoughts or the advice of men. BUT! What if I'm tempted sexually? What if I'm in a hard place of temptation at school? Then it's moreso helpful to have the text memorized and to be able to remember/recall it verbatim than to just have an understanding of the text. Jesus did this in Luke 4 and Matthew 4. He recalled/recited specific words from the book of Deutoronomy on what God's said. If I just relied on my understanding - well, just my understanding of the text in the heat of carnal desires being empassioned can sometimes be overthrown (not diminishing at all the plain meaning of the text or the power of being able to understand it!). I really need to recall the exact words of scripture sometimes and recite them in my head. Therefore, it's more powerful for me to accompany my understand with knowledge - recalling exactly what God's said and deriving its meaning from it on the spot. Just like Jesus did. If they were going to kick me out of my apartment for a silly reason like because I'm playing praise music, I'd need to know exactly what the lease says. I need to be able to recall the section on disturbances and music and have a clear understanding of the lease, and also to quote the sentence that specifically talks about music and to tell them that my praise music never rises above a certain decibel level!

What I think would be more effective is if we went through the slides to understand it first, then afterwards went through and by rote memorization retained everything we just figured out. So, both approaches at different angles would be even more effective for studying for all of us. Though it requires a more effective managing and use of time, it's the best approach to study. I didn't think that just memorization was wise because shortly after the exam you tend to forget everything you tried to put into your memory. But, if we took the time to understand the lecture slides AND memorize them, we wouldn't have that problem at all.

Only Christ Can Fill The Nets and the Fish Are His,
Isaac D.