Why I Use Bible Software...And Don't.

I have been a regular user of Bible software since my days in Bible college. I purchased a copy of Logos (back then the software was called Libronix) and it revolutionized my study! I mean it changed everything. All of a sudden I was able to do things like word studies and background information research in mere seconds. Where before I would spend hours in the library in front of the card catalog (remember those?) and then flipping through countless pages in search of the information I needed, my new electronic research assistant did all that for me faster then it took me to open another bottle of Mt. Dew (some research aids will never change!).

Over the years, my research needs have progressed and changed as I transitioned out of writing research papers for classes and into writing sermons, lectures, articles and Bible lessons for the church. I have kept up-to-date with the latest versions of Logos as they have been released, continually amazed at how much simpler it has become to do even complex linguistic analysis in the original languages. The ability to find what I am looking for in the Bible is literally as easy as typing in part of a single word, and then scanning the generated report for the verse in question. Of course, mobility has increased as well, and today the Bible is just a swipe away.

Bible software is awesome. I love it. I'm sold on its value and on its power to open up the biblical world and text to the reader. I thank the Lord for it. But along with an acknowledgment of the value of our modern software comes a nagging sense of unease; for all the great leaps we have made in putting Bible study power in the hands of anyone who wants to utilize it, is there any sense that this same ability may actually diminish the capture of biblical truth in our hearts and minds?

Allow me to illustrate (I am a preacher, after all). When I was about twelve years old, the church I grew up in (and now serve at) hosted a prophecy conference and invited Dr. John Walvoord of Dallas Theological Seminary to present a series of lectures. I clearly remember how Dr. Walvoord stepped up to the platform, laid his Bible on the lectern and proceeded to teach on the doctrine of Christ's return. In and of itself that doesn't seem unusual or unique. What made it so unusual and memorable was how he tied dozens and dozens of passages from the Old and New Testaments together, all quoted from memory, never turning a page in his Bible. I was blown away then, at age twelve, and I have never forgotten that demonstration of the power of the internalized Word!

Of course this is something of an extreme and unique example. I mean, we are talking about a seminary professor who had devoted much of his professional and devotional life to the study of the Scriptures related to the Lord's return. We would expect him to demonstrate a mastery of his material. I concur. But what I think is unique and increasingly uncommon is how he developed this ability. He did so by devoting himself to the task of hiding the Scriptures in his memory. That doesn't come by accident, nor is it going to come if our default is to hand over to the search engine what we should be disciplining our minds to do. It comes by disciplining ourselves to read the text of Scripture over and over and over until we can see the words in our mind's eye.

I want to state as clearly as possible that I do not believe that Bible software or mobile Bible apps are an evil thing, or a bad thing, or even necessarily a misused thing. As I said, I use them daily and I thank the Lord for the men and women who have spent countless hours tagging the biblical texts and creating code and datatypes that allow me to do my research in a more efficient way then previous generations ever would have imagined. They are a valuable tool in my expositor's toolbox, just as the bound concordance, lexicon and Bible dictionaries were to expositors a few decades ago.

All I am saying is that I know that if I am going to see the Word of God effectively hidden in my heart in any way like it was in Dr. Walvoord's, or the great cloud of those who internalized the Word in like manner, I must not allow myself to give in to the temptation to let my pursuit of that life-giving, sanctifying Word degenerate into just another search-box inquiry. Rather, I must purposefully and prayerfully learn the Scriptures, hide them in my heart, and feed upon them daily so that I can recall them in order to be taught, reproved, corrected and trained in righteousness, fully equipped for every good work.