Category Archives: Biblical interpretation

Reading with fresh eyes

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Rex made an excellent point yesterday. Too many doctrines have arisen that would never occur to someone who were to merely read the Bible. I don’t think the Bible was meant to be a puzzle that was hard to solve; it was meant to be communication between God and His people in a way that they could understand.

It’s an interesting exercise to try and read the Bible as if we’d never read it before, as if there were no church history and no body of Christian literature. To merely read the Bible for itself. A lot of things take on a different look.

Tradition gets in the way. Culture gets in the way. Preferences and practices get in the way. Preconceived ideas and previous teachings get in the way.

It’s not easy to try and read the Bible with fresh eyes. But it’s oh so helpful.

Some related posts:

Not worth the fight

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I guess it’s no secret that the topic of music is a highly-charged one in our brotherhood. I don’t plan to get into that argument per se; you can look at the discussion going on over at Jay Guin’s blog if you don’t know what I’m talking about (I would send you directly to Wineskins.org, but there is a brother there who insists on completely dominating the discussion. If you can’t be coherent, be loud).

Something that concerns me about the historical view held within our brotherhood are the multiplicity of arguments used to support, many which actually contradict the others. I can’t help but wonder if, when pressed on the matter, if these brothers would insist that others hold exactly to their view or is belief in the same practice enough?

The typical assertion about baptism is that the act isn’t enough, that you need to hold to the proper understanding. Does the same hold true about music? If one believes that all use of instruments in the Bible was sinful while another holds that the Old Testament allowed instruments but the New Testament doesn’t, do they believe the same thing? If one believes that the Greek word “psallo” excludes the use of instruments while another believes it refers to instruments, but that our instrument is the heart, do they believe the same thing? I could go on and on.

My fear is that we are starting from a conclusion, then working backwards to support it. If not, why the wide variety of opinions to support our practice? Many of these beliefs, might I add, are virtually unique to the person holding them.

I’m an a cappella guy. My roots are in the a cappella church, and unless I can see something of real substance to be gained by bringing in instruments, I’m not interested. But I’ve read the arguments that try to make this a critical issue, from the bizarro world of Piney to well-reasoned arguments by men like Everett Ferguson and Jack Boyd. I’m just not convinced.

It’s not worth the fight. Not worth the fight to make people use instruments, not worth the fight to make them stop. God is quite capable of expressing himself clearly on important issues. And he chose not to on this issue. Because it’s not worth the fight.

The difference between understanding and doing

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I’ve come to enjoy reading thoughts from Søren Kierkegaard. I’ll confess to never having read an entire book of his. But I’ve read a number of thought-provoking quotes. Here’s one that I find intriguing:

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world?

Kierkegaard, Søren. Provocations spiritual writings. Farmington, PA: Plough House, 1999, p. 201

It’s a little like the old Mark Twain quote: “It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.” That’s how I feel much of the time.

When original isn’t good

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Photo by Ove Tøpfer; from Stock Xchange

I got a message on Facebook the other day, asking me to look at some Bible studies someone had prepared concerning Jesus’ return. This person told me: “I show things completely differently and in a different way than you have seen before…”

When I hear something like that, little alarms go off in my head. When it comes to Bible study, originality is not a good thing. When I reach a conclusion that I’ve never heard before, I try to find someone else who has reached that same conclusion in the past. Failing that, I show my tentative interpretation to others (sometimes here in this blog), asking them to show me where I’m wrong.

The fact is, it’s hard for me to believe that so many godly people could have studied God’s Word for years without someone arriving at the right interpretation. If I come up with a truly original interpretation, odds are that I’m truly wrong.

When it comes to Bible study, originality is not a good thing.

Condemned by the Bible

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Photo by Ove Tøpfer; from Stock Xchange

I’ve been thinking about a common expression I hear. People say, “The Bible condemns ____.” Seems like we don’t use that verb in that sense very often, yet I hear it frequently in connection with the Bible.

What do we mean when we say that? I mean, I know what it means to condemn something. But at what point do we say that the Bible condemns something? I hear that applied to things that the Bible speaks negatively about, even when the Bible doesn’t say those things are actually sinful.

The problem I see is that we confuse the different meanings of condemn. We hear it said that the Bible condemns a certain something and somehow begin to connect it with salvation. Saying “The Bible condemns…” seems to add unnecessary weight to any given argument.

It seems to me, in my rarely humble opinion, that it would do us well to avoid this phrase. What do you think?