How to Study + What is a Personal Relationship with God?

Transcript How to Study + What is a Personal Relationship with God?”

Kevin Harris: Welcome to Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. This is the podcast of ReasonableFaith.org. I’m Kevin Harris. We’ve been doing a series of questions and answers dealing with some of the questions that we get at ReasonableFaith.org. We are going to deal with two questions today, Dr. Craig. This first set of questions is some personal questions for you, wanting to know some advice on how to study more effectively, your study habits, how many books you read in a year, and some things like that. This second question is another good one and it asks what we mean by a personal relationship with God. What does the Christian mean when we say we have a personal relationship with God?

Here’s some personal questions. I think I’ve even asked you this myself. It says,

Let’s look at these real quick.

Dr. Craig: OK, let me say I don’t know how many books a year I read. I don’t keep track. I don’t try to read the Bible all the way through each year or anything of that sort. I tend to study in the Bible, picking certain books. Right now I’ve been working through Hebrews for example. So I jump around and don’t try to necessarily read straight through.

Kevin Harris: I think that is good. I think we need to get free of the notion that you are supposed to do it in this cookie cutter uniform way.

Dr. Craig: Right. But there may be other times where you feel like, gosh, I just need to spend time in the Gospels, reading the words of Jesus. I’ve been reading Paul, or I’ve been reading the Old Testament, but I need to hear from Jesus, I need to read the Gospels. I think you need to give yourself that kind of flexibility.

Kevin Harris: So how do you study then? Some studying tips.

Dr. Craig: Well, let me give you some study tips. I have found that one of the most important tips for effective study is to schedule blocks of time. I find it very difficult, Kevin, to study when I just have time as I can catch it. I have found that to study effectively, I need to set aside blocks of time. So I would encourage people to (insofar as they are capable of doing this) build into their schedule blocks of time that are on the calendar – they are on the agenda for the day – that are devoted just to study and that will not be interrupted by other things. You should give yourself blocks of time to do this – a couple of hours or more – so that you can really get into it. Otherwise, you are apt to just begin and then have to pull yourself out when you are just starting to get engaged.

When you begin to study, I think it is best not to do things like read in bed or sit in a big, cushy chair and try to read. You’ll inevitably get drowsy and fall asleep if you try to do that. Rather, I think you need to sit at a desk with a straight back chair that will force you into an erect posture so that you stay alert while you read. You have to have good lighting. It is very important for the sake of your eyes to have a good desk lamp that illumines the page to study in this sort of disciplined way. If you need coffee to help stay awake, then have a cup of coffee by your side.

The next thing that I think is very, very important is to take notes on what you read. You can do this by having a computer there or taking handwritten notes. But take notes on what you read. This became very clear to me during my studies as a seminary student. I would read a book and then put it on the shelf and I would think to myself later, “What was that book about?” And I could sort of remember, “Well, it was about the historical Jesus.” But what did the author say specifically? What did you learn? I had to admit I couldn’t remember at all what I had learned from reading that book. It just went in one ear and out the other. What I discovered, in the words of one of my church history professors, is that the mind is like a sieve – it just can’t retain material for very long. So I thought, well, I’ve got to start writing down the pages on which there are significant things in this book that are important, or underlining them. And I found it didn’t help to underline or highlight because, once again, when you close the book and put it on the shelf you forgot what you highlighted and underlined. So I started writing down on a separate piece of paper the page numbers of significant things.

Kevin Harris: I would go back in some of my books, look through them, and I say, “I highlighted that, why didn’t I remember it?” That is a good insight. [1]

Dr. Craig: It’s embarrassing, isn’t it?

Kevin Harris: So you write it on a separate paper?

Dr. Craig: On a separate piece of paper, I started writing down page numbers, but that wasn’t enough because then what I had was just a sheet of numbers and it was meaningless. So I thought, there is no getting around it, I’m going to have to start taking notes. So what I started to do was I would put at the top of the page the title, the author, all of the bibliographical information – publisher, date, and so forth – and then I would take detailed notes on what I was reading, and in the right hand side of the page I would put the page number on which this material would be found. And I would summarize what I read as I went through it. If there was a really good quotation, I would write that out in full. Now with a computer, you can do this of course much more quickly than I did when I started off doing it by hand. When you are done, then, I will staple the notes together, punch them, and I will file these in various notebooks that I have in my office. I have philosophy of religion notebooks, I have systematic theology, I have science, I have theology, I have New Testament studies. I will file the material appropriately. Then I can go back and get this material when I need it, and I don’t have to go check the original book or article out of the library. When it comes to writing something, I’ll have my written notes on it with the page numbers and everything and I can say, for example, in this article, William Liken argues as follows, and just work off of my notes. This has been a tremendous benefit in study not only in retaining what I read – because in the act of writing it down, that helps to seal it in your brain – but also in having a written record of what you read that you can go back to and refer to when it comes time to do a talk or write a paper or a lesson.

Kevin Harris: You have access to it.

Dr. Craig: You’ve got it summarized and you don’t need to check the original thing out of the library and read it all over again which is a huge waste of time. So I would say that learning to take notes on what you read is the most important study tip that I could give to a student.

Now, doing that of course, Kevin, will slow you down tremendously, because if you are taking notes on what you read, you really, really go slow through a book. So to help compensate for that, I encourage students to take a speed reading course. I was skeptical of speed reading before I did it myself. I thought it meant skimming. And I thought, I don’t want to skim, I want to read what’s before me. But what I discovered when I took a speed reading course is that it is not skimming. Rather, I discovered that we have instinctively all sorts of bad reading habits that we have acquired as we read. For example, one bad habit is when your eye gets to the middle of the line it will jump back to the beginning of the line and read it over again. So you are constantly going two steps forward and one step back. That will slow you down. Another bad habit is called sub-vocalizing. What this is is reading the book aloud in your mind. You are not actually vocalizing, but you are sub-vocalizing. You are reading it aloud in your mind as you read and that really slows you down. What they teach you in these speed reading courses is how to get rid of these bad habits so that you read faster. You still read every word – it is not skimming – but you just go faster. This can help to compensate for how much slower you go when you take notes on what you read. So I would really encourage students to find a local speed reading course in their area and to take it and to begin to use some of the techniques they will teach you there.

Kevin Harris: Good advice. Let’s shift gears here a little bit. Another question that we get at ReasonableFaith.org.

OK, a personal relationship with God? [2]

Dr. Craig: This is really, really a good question. Let me share some ideas here, but boy by no means do I feel like I’ve got this one all sewn up because I think we all struggle with this area.

Kevin Harris: I’ll jump in, too, a little bit.

Dr. Craig: Please do. One thing that I think is important for Christine to understand is that I think the fundamental, personal relationship that we have with God doesn’t mean this sort of interpersonal communion or communication. Rather, what it means is that you are reconciled to God, personally and individually. The most fundamental way in which we have a personal relationship with God is that once we were estranged from God – we were morally guilty before him, we were under his wrath, we were condemned before God – and now in virtue of Christ’s atoning death and our faith in Christ and the regenerating of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we now stand in a different relationship to God. We stand in a relationship of reconciliation, a relationship of peace with God, a relationship that we are now forgiven by God, that we are now connected to God and no longer estranged. This is a relationship that exists whether you feel it or not, if you see what I mean. This is not a matter of feelings. This is a matter of being reconciled to God rather than being estranged from God. We say this is personal because it is a deeply individual thing. It is not that the church as a corporate group is simply reconciled to God. It is that I am reconciled to God. I am forgiven by God. I am now an adopted son of God and I stand in this individual relationship to God in which I didn’t stand before. That is just a fundamental difference between the Christian and the non-believer – having this kind of personal, new relationship with God.

Now, in addition to that, I think there is an experiential dimension to it as well in that God’s Holy Spirit produces in us love, joy, peace, patience, and the other fruit of the Spirit. I do think that in worship, in times of prayer, we will often sense a kind of personal presence that, when you pray, you feel like there is somebody listening instead of just praying into the empty room or to the ceiling. There is a sense that someone is listening to you, that God is your Father who cares for you. Certainly God can fill your heart with feelings of gratitude to him, of thankfulness, of longing for God, of a deep love of God, perhaps a hunger for God. I think those sorts of things could be awakened in us by God. But many times we will walk by faith and not by sight. I don’t know about you but I don’t get inner messages from God.

Kevin Harris: I don’t either.

Dr. Craig: The way some people say, “God spoke to me and said to me, ‘Go to the drugstore and speak to this person at the counter.’”

Kevin Harris: And I always want to say, “Alright, where did he talk to you? Show me the parking lot?” Certainly God can do that if he wanted to. God can do whatever he wants to do, but certainly it is not normative in the sense that you are going to hear from God in this special revelation. You probably would be on the floor as opposed to going to the drugstore.

Dr. Craig: Right, you have these inner voices. On the other hand, I have had the experience of reading Scripture and having a deep impression that God was speaking to me when I read this Scripture. God’s Word to us is contained in Scripture and I suspect that this will be the way in which God would speak to us more often than this sort of inner voice that we just mentioned.

Kevin Harris: You seem to be saying that because God is the transcendent God, he is so much higher than we are even though he has condescended to us in Christ, and the insight that she is getting as well that God is in fact immaterial, we mean by personal relationship differently than a relationship with a material person.

Dr. Craig: Yes, than another person that you can see him, you can hear him, you can interact with him, you can hold him. That is much different than it is with God. There is a certain faith element here where you walk with God without necessarily hearing and seeing and so forth. [3]

Kevin Harris: I think we get some confusion from Gospel songs from time to time: “I come to the garden along while the dew is still on the roses. And he walks with me, and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own. And the voice I hear falling on my ear” and so on. I think that was written about a girl first and then later made into a song about the Lord [laughter]. But we certainly can commune with God in nature, but it certainly is not normative to hear from him in an audible way and some things like that. Yet, all our Gospel songs seem to kind of say that.

Bill, biblically, we look back in the Scripture and the first human dilemma was man’s alone-ness. In Genesis 2, not the Fall in Genesis 3 but his alone-ness in Genesis 2, and that is Adam had not experienced the Fall, sin had not separated him from God, and yet God said it is not good for man to be alone. And we get this notion that we don’t need anything, we don’t need anybody, all we need is the Lord. When God, it seems, has ordained that he uses other people in our lives, expresses himself and loves us through others, and through nature. His way of removing our alone-ness is through these provisions. One would be marriage – now you don’t have to get married, you can be a single person. But marriage is certainly a provision of God to remove that alone-ness in Genesis 2. There is the church. There are friends. There is family and various relationships. So it is a misguided notion to be this lone ranger, isolated, miserable old person and all you need is the Lord. I know a guy who taught that, and he was married. He is not married anymore. He’s divorced. He really did sideline [his wife], he had a misunderstanding, I think, of God’s provision in marriage.

Dr. Craig: It is remarkable – isn’t it? - that in the Genesis story that even God himself wasn’t enough to meet Adam’s need for fellowship and companionship. That is a very, very good point that I think you are making.

Kevin Harris: Why would Paul emphasize all the relational aspects – all the “one another” verses – to the church? Bear with one another, forgive one another, greet one another with a holy kiss. Be patient and kind toward one another. So there is something to this human relationship that God has ordained. And also I think we can have relationship with him in nature, but she’s trying to crack down to what we mean by a personal relationship with God to the extent that it is going to be immaterial and it is going to be with the transcendent God.

Dr. Craig: Yes, that is right. Therefore, it will be very different from having a sort of human companion along side of you.

Kevin Harris: What do you think in the new heaven and the new earth, when we are with the Lord?

Dr. Craig: I take it that there the veil will be removed. I said we walk by faith not by sight, but Paul goes on to say that when we are with Christ in heaven, he says then we will see face to face. I take it that then there will be a more intimate and closer communion with God that we don’t enjoy now; perhaps even, I take it, the physical presence of Christ in his resurrection body that we would be able to experience. [4]