Some great advice for those of us pursuing an academic background in biblical studies and those already in the field.

The net result was that the game had to be played on a field and by a set of rules that were fundamentally foreign to the texts themselves. And here is where I entered the game that brought about my schizophrenia: I had pursued a Ph.D. in NT studies so that I might teach the NT with integrity in the setting of the church. In the process I had fallen into scholarship. And to do my scholarly work well, I had learned to play the game by the current rules.
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My schizophrenia came about because I never for a moment believed that these texts were nothing more than simply objects of historical research. These texts were my singular passion, because herein I had been encountered by the living God, who in Christ and by the Spirit called me to himself to be a passionate lover of God. This, and this alone, was my only reason for ever becoming an exegete: to become a better reader of the texts, so that I might both live out the life they called me to (that is, to enter into their own Spirituality2) and share this passion with others. Indeed, this is the only way I have ever taught in over thirty years in the classroom.
Gordon D. Fee, “To What End Exegesis? Reflections on Exegesis and Spirituality in Philippians 4:10-20,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 8 (1988): 75-88.