“Oh, do I have to study the
Bible every day?” Many people consider Bible study a time-consuming chore that
they must endure to prove their faithfulness to God. The Teleios team considers
Bible study as a wonderful life-enhancing activity that is part of our vital
relationship with God.
We decided to evaluate
the effect of a Bible study on the wellbeing of 46 healthy young adults from a
Christian community environment. This was a “proof of concept” study since we don’t
know of any prior research about this topic. The design was a prospective,
randomized, active-controlled, single-blind intervention trial.
Subjects were randomized to
either an active (detailed bible study program) or a control (minimally
detailed bible study program) group in a 3:1 ratio. Ephesians Chapter 1 was
chosen as the study text since it details many wonderful characteristics of our
great salvation.
The
results showed no differences between the active and control groups for any
general or specific wellbeing measure. However, when the active group was
compared to its own baseline data significant differences were observed in
overall wellbeing.
It
is unclear from our results why there was an increase of overall wellbeing in
the active group. We speculate that the gain in knowledge about the security of
their relationship with God, by faith alone, allowed for less guilt and greater
confidence.
Interestingly,
increased wellbeing was also observed in the control group, but did not quite reach
significance, possibly because of the smaller sample size. This group also
studied Scripture, but about events surrounding the creation of man in Genesis Chapters
1-4 that did not contain the salvation information from Ephesians provided to
the active-intervention group.
Consequently,
with a larger sample size it could be that greater wellbeing would have been statistically
significant in both groups. If true, it might be that studying any Scripture,
regardless of the specific content, could have a positive effect on wellbeing.
This
proof of concept study suggests that increases in short-term well-being
potentially can be achieved by a Scripture study program over the course of
4-weeks in young Christian adults.
More research is needed to
better understand the effect of improved wellbeing associated with Scripture study
both in the short and long term.
To consider, is the content of
scripture studied important in the improvement of wellbeing? If yes, which portions of Scripture are best?
Thanks
for visiting. I look forward to your comments and questions.
WC Stewart
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