As a vendor of home school resource materials, I'm often asked to suggest a good Bible curriculum. I have a difficult time with this question because in our home school, we didn’t use one. The only book we used was the Bible. We would pick a book we thought was appropriate and read it day by day aloud as a family, and we would discuss it as we went.

We asked our children to paraphrase a verse or passage after they had read it, since putting things into one's own words helps one think through the meaning, and it also helps the teacher/parent to see if the student has understand what he/she has read. We would ask questions about the verse or passage to try to help our children discern what was there, under the Spirit's guidance, and they would often have insights that surprised us. Some questions we asked were factual questions: Who? What? Where? When? Some questions required deeper levels of comprehension: What is the main idea of this passage? How would you explain what is happening here? Why do you think _____ did that? What do you think motivated ______ in his/her actions? How did ______ respond when _______did that? As you read the passage first to prepare, you will discover, through the teaching of the Spirit, what the important themes and ideas are for your family. You will gain the insights into the passage that will help you know which questions need to be asked.

My husband has taught us that there are two most important questions we should always ask at the end of our Bible study period: What does this passage teach us about God? What kind of person is a delight to Him? Since the Bible was written so we could learn what God is like and how we can know and please Him, it is important to look for this information in each passage we study. As your children learn to study the Bible this way, they will never be at a loss later in life when you are no longer there to guide them. They will know how to glean the important things God has to teach them from any passage.

It is curious to me how dependent we are in Christian schools, in churches, in Bible studies, and even at home, on books other than the Bible to lean on when we study the Bible. Most church Bible classes today seem to have a textbook where one studies what some author has said about a subject, backing up his points with some Bible verses. And the members of the class leave thinking they have studied the Bible.

For centuries the Bible was almost the only book in some households, and they read it every day, without any commentaries, atlases, or Bible study guides. And in those days, the parents were often not even high school graduates. It also seems to me that during those days we had a lower crime rate, more respect for authority in evidence, and a more literate population. I wonder if there is a connection. Today we have too many Christian books to fit into a Christian bookstore, hundreds of which are written to teach us to study, apply, and meditate on the Bible. We have daily devotionals, Bible dictionaries, Bible commentaries, Bible storybooks. and Bible videos, not to mention Bible curriculum materials for children's Sunday School, Children's Church, and adult electives. We have charts and maps and even Bible action figures. We have Bible trivia and other games based on the Bible. But do we have a Christian population that is doing more now to be salt and light in the world than we had two hundred years ago? I'll let you answer that for yourself.

So, does that mean the Bible is enough and we don't need anything else? I'd say that having the Bible is more than many of our Christian brethren have had through the ages and more than many of them have now. Some families have sacrificed greatly to get even one Bible in the house for their families to read. We think it's normal for every member of the household to have his own, with a few extra translations to spare. The churches in New Testament times did not even have New Testaments. So I'd say we don't really NEED anything else but the Bible, the teaching of the Holy Spirit, open hearts, and obedience to what God has revealed to us.