Hi, becca! I am so going to call you this weekend. Tomorrow, in fact, when my minutes are free.

The real reason I'm posting (=P) is to gripe about people's misconceptions about scripture memorization.

Misconception #1: "It's hard." - That's not true. It just takes time. Another common one I've heard from this category: "I can't memorize! I can't remember anything!" It just takes time!

Misconception #2: "People who memorize large amounts of scripture are really spiritual. I'm not that spiritual." - I can't tell you how frustrating it is when I'm trying to memorize scripture, and the best way to do it correctly is to quote to someone else so they can correct you, and all the person can say is "Wow, you're amazing!" First, I'm not! People seem to think that a person who memorizes a lot 1) is a good memorizer, and 2) has an impeccable spiritual life. In other words, a person must be really in tune with God if they are memorizing so much of what he said Second, anyone can memorize. Everyone does memorize things like names and stuff. Scripture memorization just takes time.

Misconception #3: "Aren't memory verses for children's Sunday school?" - Ugh. ugh, ugh, ugh. I just was searching online for a scripture memory program, and everything was like "use these memory verse cards in your children's sunday school program, because it's important for kids to know the word of God!" Here's a quote from a favorite prof here: "We treat the Bible as an encyclopedia of pithy quotations and devotional fragments." It's true! We take certain verses out of context, glorify them, and make sure every child memorizes them so they can "have God's word in their hearts." Now tell me, if those few verses by themselves can summarize the Bible, why do we have the Bible?

And then, as adults, we are praised if we read the Bible maybe once total. Here's a book that we claim is the word of God, and yet we rarely even read it. We try to get on "read the Bible in a year" programs which fail and then we feel like we've failed. We forget to read our Bible, and then we feel sad because we know it is right to read the Bible and we have not done right. Stupid! My dad said Dr. Mitchell, a foundational professor in the life of this school, a man who knew his Bible, used to tell his students, "You don't know the Bible really well until you've read it at least 50 times." I heard that if you read the Bible for 45 minutes a day, you'll get through it three times in a year.

Anyway, back to scripture memorization. Where did we get the idea that it was for kids? Shouldn't we memorize more now that we are adults? Here's a verse from Hebrews that may kind of illustrate what I'm saying. Typed from memory, by the way.

"Though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil."

So, memorizing verses in Sunday school as a child is good - but basically the only thing it does is try to show the importance of memorizing God's word, without really memorizing. It's milk. When are you going to be ready for solid food?

-Amber