Looking back, that was an incredibly fast three months. I had just gotten back from India in February and graduated my DTS on the 17th. While on outreach I had really gained a love for the Word of God and studied it as much as I could. I went through the book of Leviticus a few times. As difficult as it was initially, I learned how intricate and complex God is. There would be a few of us from our team doing our quite times together in the morning and I would always get excited about something I read and be like, "Guys! You got a minute? Okay, okay, listen to this..." And that would happen probably a dozen times in a very short time span. At first they were like, "Dude, that's awesome!" But after a while, it became a nuisance because they couldn't do their own quite times. At one point, they told me I should go to seminary since I loved it so much. I got super excited about the idea. Until I discovered I had to have a bachelors degree and I gave up on that idea. But then my outreach leader, Madison, told us she was staffing a CBCC (Chronological Biblical Core Course) and we should all do it.
I pushed it to the back of my mind, but there it sat for the rest of outreach and the remaining time back in Honolulu. I had always wanted to study the background and culture of the books but was always too lazy to get around to it. I still was uncertain whether or not I was supposed to do the secondary school. People kept telling me I should do it. In the back of my head I think I had already decided to do it, I just didn't want to commit myself to it. But after landing back in Seattle, WA I surprised myself a little when I told my family I was going to do the CBCC in April, only a month away. They were completely supportive and encouraged me to do it.
I still was uncertain on whether or not I should do it, but I told myself that if the $3,600 came in to pay for the school I would do it. Three weeks later, I had the full amount. I sold my car, got my tax return and even pulled some money out of my 410k plan. Everything lined up so perfectly that I was like well, guess I'm going back to Hawaii. So a week later I was on a plane back to dive into the Word of God for the next three months.
I was not prepared for what the school threw at me. I knew I was diving into the deep end but had no idea how deep that water was. The CBCC teaches the inductive method which is a way to study the Bible through the eyes of the original readers. We call them the OR for simplicity sake so if I refer to them as that it's out of habit from the 4" binder of homework I completed. We would read a text and pull out observations such as places, names, metaphors, difficult passages, analogies, key words, Strong definitions etc etc. After observing these things we would ask ourselves how is this significance to the original reader? How would this be important to them? What would it mean to them? How would they feel when they read it? We would not read a passage and then automatically try to apply it to us. The book wasn't written directly to us. It had an audience and author hundreds of years before any of us were here. So when we read it we need to understand who it was written to, what they were dealing with, understand their culture and mindset so we can better understand the text. Each text has what we call a timeless truth. That is where we pull a characteristic of God out of what we read that applies to every generation that has or will ever live. That is what can be applied, but only after you try to understand it from their perspective. If you read it through the wrong lens you will miss a lot and may come up with ideas that aren't actually biblical.
We read through 12 books, a book a week, and each one blew my mind. We read through one of each literature: Genesis, Deuteronomy, Proverbs, 1 & 2 Kings, Amos, Isaiah, Luke, Acts, Ephesians, Romans, Hebrews and Revelations. It was a sprint all the way through, I tell you that. Up until the very last day we ran, and we ran hard. Last day of the school our homework was due at 11 am, our final test was at 1 pm and we graduated that night at 6:30 pm. But it was worth it, every painstaking hour.
We would have lecture three days a week, but every day we would be in class at 9:30 am to 12:30 pm for lecture, do homework till 5 pm, have dinner and then normally be in there between midnight to 2 am. Every. Day. Six. Days. A. Week. It was vicious but the sheer amount of spiritual revelation was enough to floor you.
They say there are two different types of people who do the CBCC. The ones who do it and say that was awesome and great but I never want to step foot in a classroom ever again. And then there are the people who finish and say they can't leave until the finish the other 52 books. And that is me. I can't leave until I know the rest, there is just too much knowledge not to continue. But the ironic thing is, the more you learn the more you realize you don't know anything at all.
The CBCC was an experience like none other and I am so thankful for the staff and my peers would I got to experience it with. It was amazing and God has disciplined and expanded my mind like no other experience.
So finishing that, I realized I couldn't go home until I had had more. Three days after graduating there was a Chronological School of Biblical Study (CSBS) which is the same thing but a nine month school that does the whole Bible. The last of my CBCC friends have left to go home but I am staying here in Honolulu, Hawaii to continue and finish the Bible and see what God has in store for me in the next part of my adventure.
No comments:
Post a Comment