Honest Reading

We all experience this at one time or another. If we are all reading the same book, and we are all following the same Holy Spirit, how do we come to contradictory conclusions? Why are there so many denominations in Christianity that disagree about many things? It starts with HOW we read the Bible. 

Here's the most common 3 ways we come to wrong conclusions when we read.

The first is Devotional Only reading. That's when we don't take the Bible's context into consideration and only what the words we read mean to us. When we do this, we miss the whole point being made by the authors and create false theologies based on our emotional response and not what the Bible actually says.

If we take this verse in isolation, we can assume all kinds of meanings.

"God has a plan of good things for my life."

"God wants my business startup to be successful."

"Life as a Christian will be all good, all my life problems are solved."

Let's look at what was going on in that passage to see what we might have missed.

The kind of future hope God was referring to was on the other end of 70 years of captivity that were still to come. Not the kind of plan that we usually have in mind when quoting Jeremiah. If we take our first impression and then real suffering comes into our lives, we blame God because we have expectations that don't match the promises in scripture. This surface level understanding of individual Bible verses can do serious harm to our faith in the future. Let's look at another devotional interpretation.

It sounds like Paul is making the same false case that we made from misunderstanding Jeremiah, but when we look at the context, it's closer to what Jeremiah was dealing with than what we have in mind. He was imprisoned, facing real persecution and physical stress. He was showing us that even his own bodily suffering would in the end glorify God. He explains elsewhere that these present sufferings are incomparable to the glory of God that will be revealed in us in the resurrection. He wasn't making a case for problem free Christian life.

One more example;

When we delight in the Lord the desires of our heart are God's will. This Psalm isn't a golden ticket to all your wildest earthly desires. Jesus, in the sermon on the mount, said that those that hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied. That's the same image this passage is painting.

These verses are examples of cherry picking also, when we use them to create interpretations based on them. Here's some more specific examples.

Like the other verses, this passage seems like a recognition of power to do anything, or accomplish anything with Christ backing us up. Again, as in the previous examples the context tells the whole story and gives the greater interpretation.

 

Here's another common cherry picked verse.

This verse is often cited when sin is being excused by non believers as well as people in the Church. "Jesus said not to judge, so you're not allowed to say that what I'm doing is sin." This is illogical and completely unbiblical. Surrender to Jesus is surrender to the objective truth. Jesus is the truth. Whether we judge or don't, the reality remains and sin is sin. Jesus is telling us not to judge from the flesh, but from the spirit. That we will be judged by the standard we judge others. He also tied our forgiveness to our forgiveness to others.

In the Lord's prayer, "...forgive our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us."

We're told to even ASK God for this standard. 

The first two pitfalls are often combined or linked. The last one is when we take whole systematic theologies and denominational interpretations without justifying them with what the text says first. This can lead to thinking in a circle and not seeing the greater truths scripture has revealed.

Both sides of this argument take these verses as proving their point. Who is right? If we aren't sure, we can't base our theology on who agrees with what. We have to Dig In The Bible and see what it says. Interpreting what it means comes after we're sure about WHAT it says, not before.

 

The question that solves these problems.

"What does the text say, in it's context, and how does it fit in with the whole counsel of the Bible?"

We use these practices and go over and over God's word again and again learning more as we go. Like excavating an archaeological site. We discover new things that were already there each time we come back to the same texts. Never quit. This work is never finished. There is always more connections, more personal meaning, and more historical context to be found. 

When we read the Bible, we need to think like detectives instead of lawyers.

The other aspect of how we read is our attitude when we approach the Bible.

When we align ourselves with the character of the person of Jesus Christ we learn more each time we read.

This is the heart posture of a good "Berean." The Bereans were Jews living in Berea in the first century that didn't take what even Paul was saying concerning Jesus being the Messiah on his authority as an Apostle, or as a scholarly and credentialed "Jew among Jews." They checked what he was preaching against the Tanakh, the inspired scriptures they already had. They did so eagerly with excitement to learn the truth. 

This is the heart of "Sola Scriptura" the doctrine that God's word, not man's, is the infallible authority on the Christian faith. Not a king, counsel, or committee.

 

To learn more about the rules of interpretation

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