Certain Bible stories stand etched in our minds, whether it’s the tale of the slingshot-wielding David or the animals marching two by two. These narratives permeate our world so much so that even many non-Christians can recite the key points from memory.
You’ve probably opened your Bible reading plan to a well-rehearsed passage and pushed quickly through the familiar story. Maybe you wondered if you gained anything at all from the review. We know Scripture holds infinite treasure for those who dig deep—volumes of commentaries exist on the creation story alone, after all. But if you’re not going to approach your Bible with a Hebrew lexicon and an empty notebook, what kind of good comes from the bare rereading of Scripture alone?
God tells us his Word trains us in righteousness, and one of the ways he does this is through the sometimes-seemingly boring repetition of God’s Word (2 Tim. 3:16). Rehearsing the same-old stories guards us from the deceptions that lurk both inside and outside of us.
An Impressionable Memory
Our memory is far more impressionable than we think. When Adam and Eve took that first bite of rebellion, the curse of sin spread throughout the whole of creation, down to the neurological connections in our brain. We forget, yes, but we also remember incorrectly.
A study in the 1970s revealed just how impressionable our memory can be.[1] Researchers showed volunteers short films of car accidents. Afterwards they asked participants how fast the cars were going when they contacted each other. For other participants who watched the same clips they switched out the word “contacted” for more descriptive words like bumped, smashed, or collided.
The study found that those who heard the words smashed or collided recalled the cars driving much faster than they were. The alteration of one word changed the participants’ recollection of the event they witnessed. Furthermore, volunteers who heard the more aggressive verbs were more likely to remember seeing broken glass in the accident even though there was never any glass in the video to begin with. The subtlety of one word caused not only misremembering, but even the fabrication of a completely new memory.
Naturally, the ramifications of that particular study, and others like it, changed the way officials handled eye-witnesses throughout the judicial system. While these findings can give insight into many avenues, their warnings can be a careful reminder to discerning Christians today.
The Influences Around Us
We are saturated by constant running commentary through the internet. Social media feeds give a megaphone to every man or woman with an opinion on everything, including theology. A Christian can log onto Instagram or TikTok and be met with slick and snappy videos poking holes in the Bible stories we grew up hearing. We’re just one swipe away from a litany of biblical exposition twisted in lies.
The slip of just one suggestive word can likewise cause us to reconstruct our own faulty memories of Scripture when we aren’t steeped in the truth. Why did God force Pharaoh to keep the Israelites and then suffer the punishment of the plagues? Maybe God did manipulate Abraham into offering Isaac on the altar. Even beyond influential words, the arguments against Scripture from non-Christians and even self-proclaimed followers can push us to question our own memories of Scripture. Just like the very first lie, we might wonder, “Did God really say that?” (Gen. 3:1).
We need to rehearse God’s Word not only in order to be able to recall it, but so that we can recall it accurately. The Israelites in the desert hadn’t forgotten their experience in Egypt altogether. Their bondage didn’t slip from their memory. But as they listened to each complaining leader spout off their twisted messages, they misremembered their past (Num. 11:4-6). They reconstructed a false memory of Egypt, and they believed the lie that they were better off in bondage. Satan has always been in the business of twisting God’s Word, and he does the same to us today.
Keep Reading
Knowing our limitations and susceptibility to misremember, God beckons his people to bolster their memory. He calls us to consistently rehearse his truths, keep them in view, and retell his deeds throughout the generations (Deut. 6:6-9). Today, we have the same call, and our gracious Lord provides us with the means. He gives us tangible reminders in the form of the bread and cup of the Lord’s Supper and the water of baptism to stir our memory. He gives us the body of Christ to encourage and remind us of his truths. And our Lord also gives us the Scriptures, to fill our minds with its truth as we devote ourselves to its reading (1 Tim. 4:13).
Rehearsing Scripture is a vital part of our growth, even when we’re not doing a deep dive in those passages. The Holy Spirit encourages and convicts us with new truths from his Word, but other times he simply builds us up through repetition that guards us from the subtle influence of the evil one. Both are important. Keep reading those same old stories so that when the argument or TikTok clip questions them, you can rightly answer, “No, that’s actually not how it went.”
We need not feel discouraged when our Bible readings feel full of repetition. God’s Word never returns void (Isa. 55:11), and we can trust he will sovereignly continue to build out character, right along with our memory.
[1] Vedantam, Shankar. “Did That Really Happen?” Hidden Brain, December 16, 2019. Podcast, website, 53:04. .
