Make the Bible Your Hobby

When someone is passionate about something, you can't help but notice. When they talk about it, some of their enthusiasm might even be infectious. Their interest can make the topic interesting.

I want that to be us. Let's get Christians to be passionate about something in particular. I came across an idea that I want to put before you: Make the Bible your hobby.

Before I stumbled across this in a video, I'd never thought about it in those terms, but we absolutely can do that. There's nothing irreverent about it. Think about the people you know who have hobbies: It tends to bubble out of them. They'll talk about it at a moment's notice, and they do it with enthusiasm. And they go into depth. They know it inside and out and are willing to share far more than you want to know.

Would you like to have that kind of passion about the word of God?

How would you go about making the Bible your hobby? Think about other hobbies people have and how they get into it. Take sports as an example. Lots of people watch their favorite football team, but you know people who watch every football game. They know stats of teams and players, watch the draft, and follow training season. For them football isn't a few hours on Sunday; it's something they think about all the time, something they watch every chance they get.

We can apply this mindset to the scriptures. Instead of being something we do 15 minutes a day, we can make it something we do with our free time. We can dig in beyond the superficial level so that we really know it inside and out.

Now, if you've already got a hobby, I'm not saying you need to give that up. You can have more than one hobby. There are plenty of people whose hobbies are football and fishing, or gardening and knitting, or football and knitting. Sure, if you have more than one, that lessens how much time you have for each, but at least you are pouring some of your time, energy, and interest into the Bible.

Where will you get time for this hobby? How are you spending your free time now? Watching TV? Scrolling on your phone? Sitting in traffic?

If you choose to take up this hobby, you will know the scriptures better and you will be a more interesting person, because people who are passionate about things are interesting. Is that worth giving up some TV time or mindless scrolling?

And if your current "hobby" is sitting in traffic, get an audio Bible.

So what would it actually look like to make the Bible your hobby? There are a variety of ways to do it. First, you can simply read more; instead of reading your 5-15 minutes a day, you could read for 30 minutes, even an hour some days.

Better still would be to start going into depth. Pick a book and study it. Read it repeatedly. Outline it. Read several commentaries on it. Make it a year-long project. For example, you could make Hebrews your Sunday book. Every Sunday afternoon, you're reading or digging into Hebrews. For a year.

Another approach you could add in would be reading books about the Bible or to help you understand the Bible. It's like the football fan who studies stats or the car collector who reads car magazines. Reading about how we got the Bible can help you appreciate the scriptures more. Or you could read books that explain the history, what was going on in the background of the Bible; this can really open up Bible passages to you. You could read a scholarly Bible introduction and wrestle with who wrote what and why.

You could become a connoisseur of translations. You can study how different translations work. It's amazing how many English translations are available to us. You could be that person who can drop useful tidbits into your Bible study group's discussion like "I think the CEV really captures the sense of this passage well" and read it to them.

Doing this can not only make your enthusiasm interesting, it can make you a resource to the people in your life and your church. And people who love the scriptures encourage other people to love the scriptures, which is only a good thing because God's word changes us when we submit ourselves to it.


I said I'd never thought about it in terms of a "hobby", but it appears I made the Bible my hobby several years ago, so let me suggest some resources to help you get started if you'd like to get "under the hood" of the Bible.

Short, basic works:
Brief Insights on Mastering the Bible by Michael Heiser
Bible Translations for Everyone by Tim Wildsmith

Intermediate:
How We Got the Bible by Neil Lightfoot
An Introduction to the Old Testament by Longman and Dillard
An Introduction to the New Testament by Carson and Moo
New Testament Times by Merrill Tenney
Old Testament Times by RK Harrison
Unearthing the Bible by Titus Kennedy
Seven Things I Wish Christians Knew about the Bible by Michael Bird
Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism by Hixson and Gurry

Or if you'd prefer something to listen to/watch, there are lots of good, free courses at Biblical Training.org. I especially recommend:
History of the English Bible by Dan Wallace (beginner)
Bible Translation by Bill Mounce (beginner)
Textual Criticism by Dan Wallace (intermediate)
Formation of the New Testament Canon by Michael Kruger (intermediate)


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