In light of the message from Sunday’s sermon, as we consider the means by which God lights our way through the darkness (i.e., through His Word), questions arise about what Bibles to use. This weekend, my brother sent me a video of someone reviewing a stack of new study Bibles, and then he followed up with this question: “Is there a strong reason to stick with physical paper study Bibles vs. digital? It seems like digital would be easier to quickly navigate the cross-references.”

Here’s my reply: I’m certainly thankful for electronic Bibles and I utilize them often, but physical copies are definitely preferable for daily reading.

1. With an electronic copy, it’s impossible to easily maintain a sense of where you are in a given book relative to its length and relative to the rest of the Bible. With a physical copy, you can easily see where you are relative to the beginning and end of the Bible as whole and can far more quickly skim the surrounding context to see what comes immediately before and after your passage and where that given book begins and ends. It’s like using Google maps to navigate you somewhere: if you’re zoomed in too far, you don’t have a sense of where you really are on the journey because there’s simply not enough context within view at any given time.
   
   
2. Once you become familiar with a physical Bible and the order of the books, you’re able to turn to other passages more quickly than when having to tap through the menus of a digital Bible.
   
   
3. It’s usually easier to skim the notes of a passage with a physical Bible where all the notes are at the bottom of the page.
   
   
4. It’s easier make your own notations in the margin and in the text itself, such as your own underlining, circling, and other mark-up schemes, as well as arrows and lines connecting nearby verses on the page.
   
   
5. Physical pages facilitate better learning as you establish a memory of where certain key texts are on the physical page.

Regardless of what form you prefer, just take up and read!

Blessings in Christ,

Pastor Evan