Why Study the Bible?

Transformation involves the movement from egocentric control of one’s life toward a life centered on commitment to the will of God, whatever that might entail and however costly it might turn out to be. It is exploring all the sealed and stale rooms of this God’s house we call our selves, and offering all we find to the real owner for forgiveness, acceptance and healing. It is unmasking our complicity in systems and structures of society which violate people’s lives, and becoming ready agents of justice. It is discovering the unjust and violated parts of ourselves as well. It is a process, not an arriving: we are “transforming,” not transformed. But all along the way there are flashes of insight, moments of exquisite beauty, experiences of forgiveness and of being healed, reconciliations and revelations that confirm the rightness of our quest and whet our appetites for more. — Walter Wink, Transforming Bible Study (Nashville: Abingdon, 1980), pp. 82-83