What Bible translation should I use? How do I move beyond simply reading my Bible to actually understanding what it says? You may be thinking you have a Bible problem.

You Don’t Have a Bible Problem. You Have a Toolkit Problem.

I want to give you the toolkit in a live 90-minute teaching on September 3rd

Here’s where most people quietly give up on the Bible: they read a passage three times, feel confused, overwhelmed, or just disinterested. This leads them to believe the problem must be them.

It isn’t. You were handed the richest library in human history (the Library of Alexandria ain’t gotten nothin on the Scriptures!) multiple authors, three languages, poetry and law and letters and narrative. But the problem likely is that you were never taught how to read it.

I’m convinced we’re not getting wiser in an age of endless short-form content. We’re getting more anxious, more scattered, less sure who to trust. So I want to do the opposite with you: slow down, go deep, and actually learn how to understand what you are reading in the Bible.

On Thursday, September 3rd at 7:00 PM EST, I’m going live for 90 minutes to give you the toolkit — the depth of seminary, made accessible for the everyday follower of Jesus. We’ll cover:

• The three pillars of interpretation: History, Literature, and Theology

• Why genre changes meaning — and how missing it wrecks so many well-meaning Bible studies

• A responsible crash course in Hebrew and Greek word studies (and the traps to avoid)

• The most common interpretation mistakes even lifelong churchgoers make every week

You’ll walk away able to move from simply reading the Bible to actually understanding it, all through a posture of humility.

The goal: Letting the Scriptures master you rather than trying to master them.

Here’s the part I love. I teach a full course on this that normally goes for $199. I’m not going to ask you to pay it. Just come in as a paid member of Humble Theology $8/month or $80/year and you get all of it:

• This live teaching and the full course, the $199 value, free

• My complete locked archive — every members-only essay, searchable, for when the hard questions hit

• A new deep-dive essay every month, footnotes chased down

• Every future course, including the ones I’m building now on Forgiveness, and Paul and the Powers

To join — two steps:

1. Upgrade to paid → Become a member

2. RSVP for the live stream → Save your seat for Sept 3

Bring the passage that’s frustrated you for years. Let’s open it together on the 3rd.

It’s an honor to study the Bible with you.

Grateful for you, Dr. Joel J. Muddamalle

P.S. — Every live teaching is recorded and lives in your members’ library with the full course. Lifetime access, your pace. The one thing you can’t get back later is being in the room live — so come with your questions.

Become a member

RSVP Today

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; in all your ways know him, and he will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:5–6, CSB)

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I walked down the stairs and heard three little voices yell in unison, “But Dad, you promised!” Six brown eyes were staring at me, shocked and hurt that I had broken my promise to them. I had promised them the day before that I would take them out on a “dad date” to eat at our favorite pizza spot and grab some ice cream afterward. But the promise I made the day before was no longer possible the day after. As I looked at my kids’ faces, I saw something that broke my heart, because I realized I had broken their trust.

Broken trust has a way of breaking relationships. It leaves us intimately aware of our vulnerability because we took the risk of relying on someone else. I once learned that the English word “vulnerable” comes from the Latin vulnare and has in mind the reality of being willingly placed in a position of potential for wounding. I hate this. And yet, vulnerability is the prerequisite to intimacy. Having confidence in intimate relationships within a marriage, siblings, family, and close friends is incredibly beautiful. Until the wounding happens. Then trust is shattered.

It often makes us question what we believed and if we should have ever trusted that person in the first place. If we are the ones who broke trust we may face the guilt of hurting someone’s feelings. All of this has a direct impact on our relationship with God.

We think, “Well, my trust has been broken before with people so why wouldn’t it be the same with God?”

But friends, it’s not the same with God. In fact, it’s very different. In our relationship with God,

God never breaks His promises because if He did, He would cease to be God.

In Proverbs 3:5-6 we are given the imperative (command) to trust in the Lord with all our heart. There are two Hebrew words that start this verse that we should pay close attention to. The first word is “trust/ bā·ṭǎḥ” This Hebrew word has to do with a type of confidence that comes from reliance rooted in a feeling of security. The second word is “heart/ lēḇ” and for the ancient Israelites, this was the wellspring of volition. Today when we hear about the “heart” we may think of emotions and affection. But for the Israelites, the heart was where both affection and intellect resided.

So, what is this Proverb starting out with? A command to experience the confidence that comes from reliance on God through our wholehearted (intellectual and emotional) commitment to Him. The confidence we can be assured of that comes from trusting in God is rooted in the faithfulness of God. God keeps his promises. He delivers on what he says he will do. If you’ve ever wondered if this is actually true. That God actually follows through on his promises, a quick point of reference can be the fact that there are close to 300 prophecies regarding Jesus in the Old Testament. When you trace these prophecies (some may call them future promises) we find in the New Testament that all of them were fulfilled (insert mind-blown emoji).

All of this to say, with confidence - God is a promise-keeper.

But something very important for us to remember is that God works and acts based on His will, not ours. The next phrase of Proverbs 3:5 warns us not to lean on our own understanding. Our understanding is limited and finite. It is imperfect and flawed. But God’s wisdom is unlimited and infinite, perfect and flawless. Friends, this is good news! It means we can truly experience safety and security through a reliable trust in God.

“So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs [ṣēlāʿ] and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made [bāná ] a woman from the rib [ṣēlāʿ] he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.”

Genesis 2:21–22, NIV

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The Miss: Sadly, our modern cultural and social context can tend to frame our understanding of words and verses. Today when we think of a “rib” we think of a part of the human body that is helpful but not necessary. It is very possible for someone to fracture, crack, or even break a rib and the pain is immense but it’s not necessarily life or death.

When we take that understanding and import it onto Genesis 2:21 the conclusion can be that woman is an important part of creation, but since she comes from Adam and his rib, she still comes in 2nd best. In other words, yea; it could be painful to lose her but its not life or death. She comes from “just a rib” after all. Right?

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Greco-Roman

In the New Testament we find continued discussion of sexuality and sex in explicit terms. The Apostle Paul spoke often of the dangers of unbridled sexuality. Paul’s teaching in the NT comes into focus once we locate it in the backdrop of the Greco Roman world, “where various forms of sexual license were common.” This detail is important for us because it builds a bridge to our current context. Sexual freedom, exploration, and license is as common today as it was in the Greco-Roman world. It is true that Rome was a very sophisticated city that had influence in the known world at the time. However, it was also one of the most sexually …

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“To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” (Genesis 3:16, ESV)

Certain verses in the Bible have been used in ways that the Bible itself never intended. At times, these verses have been weaponized in manipulative ways. At other times, the verses have just been misunderstood and misapplied. Though the intentions may have never been malicious, the impact was nonetheless damaging.

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Genesis 3:16 is one of those verses. I want to take a look specifically at the second half of the verse, talking about a woman’s desire and the man’s rule.

Here is how this verse has been weaponized.

…

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Popular pornography sites are seeing continual upticks in viewership. Pornhub had over 42 billion visits in 2019 according to a Forbes article. With the increase in viewership creates immense opportunity to commercialize around pornography. NBC news reports that Pornography has a global revenue i…

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This is the last week this post is available for all FREE Humble Theology Subscribers. Enjoy! Also, consider upgrading to a paid member to get access to this and over a hundred theology and Bible essays in the archive exclusively available for Paid Subscribers. I can’t continue to research, write, and produce Biblical content without your support. I’m so grateful for you and your investment!

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We gather, we sing, we say the words — *He is risen, He is risen indeed* — and then we go home and eat ham (or Chicken Biryani) and wonder if we actually believe what we just said. Not because we’re bad people. But because the resurrection is an audacious claim. A man died. A man rose. And somehow, that changes everything about everything.

I was once asked on a podcast if there was anything that could shake my faith and cause me to move from belief to disbelief.

I responded simply - Yes, show me the body.

So let’s slow down and actually deal with it.

The Cross Was Not a Defeat

Before we get to the empty tomb, we have to understand the cross rightly. Because most people, even many Christians; read the cross as a tragedy that God turned into a triumph. Like Jesus lost round one and won round two.

But that’s not what happened.

Jesus on the cross was victorious, not defeated. Here’s why that matters: the cross was understood in the anc…

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In a world consumed with “what can I get” and “how does this benefit me” — in a culture that designs mobile devices to make taking selfies easier and almost automatic, we find ourselves in great danger.

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And before we think this is a new or novel idea, we would be wise to remember that there is nothing new under the sun. The people who celebrated Jesus as he entered Jerusalem had their own motives and agendas. They had their own terms, their own conditions, for accepting the kingship of Jesus. Those terms were communicated through the symbols they held and the words they shouted.

John 12:12–15 (CSB): The next day, when the large crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, they took palm branches and went out to meet him.

It would be easy to gloss over the symbol of pal…

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The other day, walking into a church in Lubbock, TX to speak at a college ministry, I had a panic attack. In the moment, I didn’t realize what was happening to me. In my mind I was totally fine, but my body had finally had enough. It triggered a response to help my mind catch up to the constant state of panic, anxiety, and chaos I had been feeling for the last four weeks since my book, The Unseen Battle, released.

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I sat in the green room and found myself on my knees in prayer, earnestly asking the Lord to calm my nerves, bring healing to my body, and meet me in my weakness. He did just that — through His Word. I picked up my Bible and flipped to Psalm 46, a passage I’ve come to truly treasure. When everything feels like it’s falling apart, Psalm 46 reminds us:

I suspect many…

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And fittingly, launch week was… a battle.

Not just the kind you see, but the kind you feel.

On the very day the book was released, I had to fly to Dallas. We found out my dad had to undergo triple bypass heart surgery. What was supposed to be one surgery became more complicated: a valve replacement was added, and the procedure was delayed because of how complex everything became.

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Flights were canceled. Then delayed.
Plans unraveled. Charlotte was hit with a massive snow storm that we haven’t had in almost 10 years which created more travel delays.
Organizational hiccups surfaced with a live stream we had planned to launch the book.
Complications piled up with relational dynamics, some I can’t even talk about.

And yet, here’s what is still true today:

Christ is victorious.
The dark powers have been stripped of their ability to blind the nations.
The gospel is still the best news anyone could ev…

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In Homer’s telling of the fall of Troy, the war is fought over Helen. Every battle is always fought over something. In Troy’s case, it wasn’t ultimately brute strength that brought the city down, but deception that was made possible because obsession.

The Trojan Horse wasn’t a military failure.
It was a failure of discernment.

The Trojans, and King Priam interpreted the horse as a sign of divine favor.

In reality, it was a beautifully packaged act of vanity, designed to deceive from the inside out.

Troy didn’t fall because of what attacked it from the outside, but because of what it willingly welcomed in.

Troy fell because of what it let inside.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Today, spiritual warfare rarely looks like open confrontation. It looks like deception. It looks like the slow sleight of hand that convinces us we’re experiencing “divine favor,” while quietly forming habits, loves, and allegiances t…

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In The Unseen Battle, I trace how warfare language slowly moved from daily vigilance to occasional explanation.

“Spiritual warfare became abstract not because Christians stopped believing in it, but because it no longer shaped how they interpreted ordinary life.”

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We still use the language, but we apply it only when things become extreme or unexplainable.

The biblical pattern is the opposite.

Scripture locates spiritual conflict in:

– allegiance

– loyalty

– attention

– habit

“The enemy is not primarily interested in dramatic moral collapse. He is interested in shaping the conditions under which collapse becomes i…

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The modern Christian imagination has been quietly reshaped.

Not simply by heresy.

Not solely by disbelief.

But by specifically through disconnection.

We still affirm spiritual realities. We still conceptually believe in angels, demons, resurrection, and heaven. But somewhere along the way, we stopped organizing our lives around what Scripture assumes is real - a cosmic worldview.

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As I argue in The Unseen Battle, the Bible never stops to defend the unseen realm. It simply presupposes it.

“Scripture does not argue for the existence of an unseen realm. It assumes it. The biblical authors write as though heaven and earth are overlapping spheres of the same reality.”

This is why the language of the Bible feels so foreign to us.

It was written from within a worldview we no longer inhabit.

The problem isn’t that modern Christians reject the supernatural.

It’s that we’ve been discipled to treat it as background noise.

The biblic…

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“Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand? And if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” (Matthew 12:25–28, NIV)

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This poses some difficult questions.

• How is it possible that evil forces could have any kind of “authority?”

• What does all of this mean in light of Jesus and the …

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I actually wrote a section in a PhD paper some years ago identifying how God views “multi-ethnicity” and what his “ideal” is for humanity. Check it out, and let the Biblical text drive your theology, not political ideology or philosophy.

(Source: Horne, Charles, and Julius Bewer. The Bible and Its Story: The Law, Levi…

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“Should people listen to their favorite social media theologians over the personal pastors who lead them?”

Now, obviously this is much more complex. But it gets to the heart of the issue I’ve been struggling with.

Sometimes—actually, lately it’s been often—I’ve found myself wanting to quit my presence on social media. I love teaching theology. I love commenting on cultural issues from a biblical worldview rooted in the text. I want to always start from the biblical text, not from human philosophical ideologies.

So here’s the rub: I think we’ve lost (or neglected) the spiritual practice of discernment and applying discernment to theological triage. Gavin Ortlund has an amazing book on theological triage that’s been so helpful for me. There are primary…

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One of the things I love doing is partnering with local churches to teach a course called “How To Study The Bible.” I usually come in on a Friday or Saturday to teach this course and then stick around to preach on Sunday. (If you’re interested in this, I’d love to hear from you!)

Now, I’m bringing parts of that teaching directly to you.

I’ve created an exclusive video series for my paid Humble Theology Substack subscribers. This is the kind of content I usually only deliver in person at churches, but I wanted to make it available to everyone who supports this work.

Watch the trailer below:

Ready to dive in? Upgrade to a paid subscription to access the full “How To Study The Bible” series and all premium content.

Thank you so much for your support! I literally could not keep writing, researching, and providing the theological and biblical resources that I’ve been able to release over the last few years without you.

This is the first teaching in a new series that will equip you to study God’s Word with confidence and clarity. Let’s get started.

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It could be a “me” thing or it could be a “journal” thing. I’ve come to the conclusion it’s both. You may be like me. The thought of a journal excites you. You get started, but then fall off. The same is true for a Read the Bible in a Year plan. The idea of it is exciting. The possibility of learning and growing in the Word is a true value. But then you get into it, and like around 94% of the people who say they will read the entire Bible in a year—you bounce.

You’re not alone. I’m right there with you.

Over the last few years, I’ve found myself doing my very best to get into a Read the Bible in a Year plan and have it stick. I finally realized that I’ve got things in so many different places I wasn’t able to finish and stay consistent. So I thought, “What if we create…

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If you’ve ever felt like the Bible has hidden layers you’re not seeing, you’re right. And good news. You’re in the right place.

I’ve never seen this done before. A Bible reading plan that is specifically focused on the theme of the spiritual realm. Angels, demons, nephilim, leviathan, supernatural encounters and miracles - all of it. Ever wonder why we get so stuck in Leviticus? What is the point of all of this clean vs. unclean policy and procedures? Why the various sacrifices and feasts? What if the reason God cares so deeply about our “holiness” is because of what took place in Genesis 6 with the unholy (unclean) alliance between the Sons of God and the daughters of man? What the Nephilim actually give us is a backdrop that brings a bit of clarity to why God wants us to be a people who are set apart and holy?

This year, it’s time to break the cycle of skipping the weird parts of the Bible. It’s time to join the 6% who actually finish reading the Bible in a Year. And good news - the…

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