Mary's Friday Newsletter 5/2/25

Things that annoy me about Bible study materials + my Mother's Day sale

Hello there dear ones,

I got to do some of my very favorite things this past week! I repotted all my houseplants and made a huge mess in our garage that I still have to clean up. Last Spring, I was able to revive my ailing fiddle leaf plant with new soil and fertilizer, but she’s looking weary of the world these days. Stay tuned.

Our local greenhouse has an amazing collection of succulents, so I took a leap of faith (or foolish optimism—I always kill them) and bought a few to try by our sunny back patio door.

I also got to start painting on a little side project: a new card design for Takethemameal.com (started locally by people we know). You probably know that I’m doing more art teaching lately, including creating tutorials for all skill levels here on Substack. What I’ve always found with teaching is that I learn so much in the process. Even thinking through last week’s lesson on putting down paint, pushed me to think more carefully about my own painting process.

Purple and green!

I also got to teach our Thursday small group Bible study. To sit down with these women and talk over the Scripture is such a joy. And just like the watercolor instruction, I learn so much researching and preparing the studies, but then as we discuss, I learn from each person as they process and bring their own thoughts and make unique connections. I would say it feels magical, but I don’t believe in magic, so it must be the Holy Spirit at work in us in these sacred spaces of community!

As I write these studies, I think about all the things that have annoyed me about Bible study materials I’ve used in the past. These annoyances may say more about me than the actual studies, but I’ll let you be the judge. With that caveat, here’s my list of things that annoy me about some Bible study materials:

1. When Bible studies don’t create space for people to sit with and contemplate or meditate on the passage before breaking it down in detail. Before breaking down a passage, I think we need to sit with it as a whole thought, trying to get a sense of what the author was intending and how it fits in with what comes before and after. That might mean spending a few minutes setting the scene. What came before? What are the author’s intentions for this book? What themes have we already seen the author develop? What is the location and who are the characters? This might mean that we need to read a passage through multiple times, maybe even in multiple translations to get an idea of any possible translation differences.

2. I find it really distracting when Bible studies have so many references to other Scriptures beyond the study text. I find that you can spend so much time in other texts pulled in without context that you lose track of what the author is saying in the actual passage you’re studying. You end up covering a lot of ground, but overwhelmed by information. Of course, sometimes you really need other Scriptures to illuminate the text because the author is interacting with other texts. My current approach is to dive deep into the actual text we’re studying and bring in other Scriptures only if it helps us better understand what the author is saying. If I use another Scripture, I often copy and paste the text into the study guide so we don’t have to do so much flipping back and forth (I think this would depend on the group and their familiarity with the Bible).

3. I find it annoying when Bible study questions don’t prompt you to think deeply about your own life and context. If questions don’t challenge you to ask what the Holy Spirit might want to teach you and only focus on fact-based questions, this seems shallow. If we’re not thinking about how the Scripture transforms our everyday lives, are we letting it do its job?

4. On the other side of this, if Bible studies only focus on personal application, they might miss the social and communal implications of the Bible. What does this mean for my community? What does this mean for the way I treat others? Whose needs should I be looking out for? What political implications does this have? By political, I mean the way we run our societies—not partisan/pick-a-side politics. I think Bible study questions shouldn’t all have clear-cut answers. I think they should generate deep thinking, discussion, and even disagreement. How else will we grow if that answer is already clear to everyone?

5. I find it to shallow if Bible studies always have a clear-cut explanation for what a passage means. Many things in Scripture are clear and meant to be so by the authors. Other passages or even single word interpretations have been debated for centuries. People spend their whole lives studying and writing about these things. Most of the Bible study materials I’ve ever used don’t interact with Bible scholarship in a way that’s accessible. When we come to such a passage, I think it’s important for Bible studies to say something like, “scholars disagree about what this means, but here are a few possible interpretations.” This helps readers appreciate the scholarship that has and is being done. It also helps us be open to thinking critically about the Scriptures. If we can learn to do that, then we can become more discerning. Then we can say, “I don’t favor this particular interpretation because of XY and Z.” I think sometimes we’re so afraid of getting it wrong and becoming accidental heretics (which is probably way more common than we realize), that we got locked into a narrow way of thinking that doesn’t do justice to the complexity of Scripture and its scholarship.

Thanks for reading my little soapbox. I myself have taught and written Bible studies with all these annoying things, so I’m not here to judge. Let me know what you think, and where you agree or disagree. I know I’ve got my blind spots.

Also, I wrote my own Bible study this week, Chapter 2 of the Jesus Speaks to Women series. You can check it out HERE. I’m particularly happy to incorporate a little art/art history into these studies.

You can still take advantage of the mother’s day sale in the shop for a few more days!

For next week, I’m planning a new tutorial teaching you how to mix colors. Can’t wait to share it with you. Have a great weekend. Jesus loves you!

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