Why I left Bible Bowl Part I

Let me first begin with why I joined Bible Bowl. There was a time in my life that I was busy working for God, but I was not spending time with Him. I knew of Him, but I didn't know Him personally and intimately. My conscience (the voice of God) kept telling me to study. I wanted to study, but for many reasons that I won't get into here, I never did. At least not on a consistent basis.

I knew my Bible, probably better than most, but I knew that God was not pleased with my study habits and my efforts to know Him better. So I joined the Bible Bowl. At the time I believed it was an answer to prayer. I would be forced to study in order that I not look bad when the competition came. The first year we had a team we decided to divide up the books among us. My book was Deuteronomy. I was so discouraged because it wasn't really in a story format and I wasn't sure how to go about reading. At any rate, my team won the first few rounds of competition and off to Ohio to the National games we went. I was blown away at how well read the teams were and how quickly they answered questions, often with only a few words haven been read.

The games were a success, except for the guy in the hallway who was arguing over his points and the little kid that cried because he got the question wrong. I figured that was just a part of the game and didn't take much notice.

After we came back from our win, we recruited others to play in the other age groups. We would meet after church to go over the material and study. Fast forward a few years and the youth team makes it to the National competition, but they are no match for one of the other teams.

They lose, but are confident that it's just because they didn't take the time necessary to study. So this time they want to "study", but they don't want to take time to be bothered with the principles of the story of any "unnecessary" details because at Bible Bowl they are only required to regurgitate facts. Finally, they didn't want to participate at all because they knew they couldn't win.

A similar thing happened with my team. One of my teammates was one of the best in the country, and no one would show up to play us because they didn't want to lose. What happened to everyone is a winner in Bible Bowl? What happened to you win because you opened your Bible and read? I would ask other teams for tips on how to study and no one wanted to share, because we might beat them. Wow, I thought this was about studying to know God.