When I lead a Bible study, I invariably ask the same three questions every time. The first is simply ‘what’s weird?’
Occasionally, depending on the group, the text, and how easy it is for them to follow, I might start with a fourth: ‘what’s going on?’ This is the basic comprehension question, which does sometimes need to be asked. When leading a Bible study with teenagers I might drop this first question altogether and spend longer on the comprehension.
It’s important we follow the thread of what the passage is saying, and in a complex bit of logic in one of Paul’s letters it is helpful to ensure we’ve followed the thread and not just grabbed the sentence that we think we understood. People’s ability to read and follow isn’t as strong as it used to be, after all.
However, I’ve sat through many a Bible study where all we do is basic comprehension questions and everyone looks exhausted by being asked something where the answer is very clearly on the page. You all sit and look at each other, not necessarily because you don’t know the answer but because the whole experience is embarrassing and you’re hoping someone will just read the verse that we just read that answers the question so we can get this thing over with and have another biscuit.
I try not to start with ‘what’s going on’ unless I have to. For example, when working through a narrative passage most people follow the story even if they don’t understand it, so instead I ask first ‘what’s weird?’ Sometimes I expand this into ‘what’s weird, or strange, or doesn’t make sense, or stands out to you?’
There’s a couple of motivations here for me. The first is the primary one: this is a good pedagogic question—for all it doesn’t look like it and can sound flippant—because it exposes where the group doesn’t understand. Rather than making people repeat things they do understand we start instead with discovering what we aren’t clear on.
In my experience, once a group has a high enough level of trust that they’re willing to talk, asking ‘what’s weird’ will get us into the text very quickly. Sometimes you need to back up a bit because someone jumps to the end and you’re reasonably sure other people’s answers to ‘what’s weird’ will be upstream of whatever our attention has just been drawn to, but as long as you acknowledge and return to it very few people mind if you pause before swinging back to their question.
What’s weird will expose where someone hasn’t understood the story or flow of the text much better than asking what’s going on. It’s important that exposing ignorance isn’t exposing of people, but that’s got more to do with the manner in which a study is lead than with the questions we ask. We honour people’s questions, even if they aren’t the questions the text wants us to ask; we do need to also acknowledge that they aren’t the questions the text wants us to ask while still grappling with them on their terms.
‘What’s weird’ also tends to pull the most difficult or challenging part of the text into sharp relief. That again is good pedagogy, otherwise we spend half an hour being British about it while someone boils with their difficult question. It is better to confront them head on and then turn back to the text of the Bible on its own terms to see whether or not it answers it. Don’t rush to simple answers; allow the strange to be strange.
That’s the second reason I find it to be a helpful question. I largely lead Bible studies for Christians who (think they) are familiar with the Bible. I deliberately try to turn up the contrast for them. Let’s not just give some nicely pious answers and then decide the application is ‘pray and read your Bible more.’ Rather, let’s get into the text, let’s confront the offence of it. Getting people right into what is actually going on in, for example, the plagues of Egypt, is better than surface level discussions about God’s action in disastrous events.
I find the question more effective the larger chunk of the Bible you’ve just read together. When I went through Exodus with a group over a year, we read around two chapters every time we met and then asked ‘what’s weird’ as the first of our three questions. We spent three quarters of the time on this first question because it was foundational for the subsequent two questions. It’s easier to then notice, for example, that the plagues are in a pattern and comment on that together and then wonder what the text is telling us.
Or, for example, reading the instructions for the Tabernacle in big chunks gives us a better chance of visualising what we’re reading.
Once a group gets used to this question they start to have fun in the text and don’t just raise what confuses them but also start to play in their attempts to read the Bible. The moment when someone reads the crossing of the Red Sea and asks ‘is this baptism’? Or reads the gift of Manna and says, ‘wait, is this like communion?’ is a particularly special one. It’s a question that establishes a culture: it’s ok to ask, it’s ok to try, it’s ok to have a go.
Of course, since the group I’m talking about read the Bible with me, they would have great delight in shouting ‘it’s a tree!’ whenever they spotted one; I would then ask in reply ‘so what?’ so they could explain to me how this tree fitted into the Bible’s grand narrative and connects to Eden, New Jerusalem, and the Cross.
The Bible’s a weird book, asking ‘what’s weird’ will keep you going for a while.
Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash
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