Bible Study​—Is It for You?

“NOT to be read without the presence of a priest.” This warning appears at the beginning of some Bibles owned by Catholics. “As Catholics we haven’t always been exposed to the Bible,” says Kay Murdy of the Catholic Bible Institute in Los Angeles, “but that’s changing.” Once Catholics become aware of how the Holy Scriptures can affect their life, she notes, “they develop their own hunger and thirst for the Bible.”

Regarding this change, the magazine U.S. Catholic quotes a religious education coordinator who said that Catholics who joined Bible study classes felt that “they got shortchanged as Catholics, and that there is a lot of richness in the Bible. They want to capture some of that richness they felt they missed.”

Be that as it may, what “richness” is there for a student of the Bible to discover? Consider: Would you like to know how to cope with the anxieties of everyday life? How can you maintain peace in the family circle? Why is there so much rude and antisocial behavior? What is the cause of violence among today’s youth? Reliable answers to these and other perplexing questions can be found in God’s Word, the Bible, and they would be “richness,” indeed, not only for Catholics or Protestants but also for Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Shintoists, even atheists and agnostics. As the psalmist put it, ‘God’s word was a lamp to his foot, and a light to his roadway.’ It can be the same to you.​—Psalm 119:105.