James 1:22But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
Studying the Word without laboring in personal and communal application is not fully studying the Word. The Word is designed to speak into our lives.
Kierkegaard points out "the error of coming to inspect the mirror instead of to see oneself in the mirror."
Kevin Vanhoozer further describes the error in the academic world: "The purpose of interpretation is no longer to recover and relate to a message from one who is other than ourselves, but precisely to evade such a confrontation. The business of interpretation is busyness."
In order to be correctly handling the Word of God in the academic world, we must seek to apply it to our lives, families, cultures, cities, etc.
In order to succeed in this application, we must be engaging in conversations with people outside our academic, head-knowledge bubble.
We cannot simply go through the text and address all the problems that liberal critics point out; rather, we must seek to understand the message of the Gospel of Christ and how it speaks to our world with all of its false idols, insecurities, man-made religion, etc.
Textual understanding must be coupled with an engagement of culture to faithfully study the Word.
"Faith seeking textual understanding."
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